...and if not now then when?

Trailers and Busses and Trucks, oh my!

2011-04-16T17:37:00.003-04:00

All i do lately is read about diesel engines and veggie oil conversions, and lurk on kijiji's classified listings
In a week we're gonna buy this truck and trailer we've been saving for.
Or maybe it'll be a motorhome. Or maybe it'll be a school bus. Whatever it is, we've got one week to find it and buy it and inspect it and insure it and bring it back to winnipeg. Which maybe includes installing a good hitch and a brake controller and maybe sway bars? And how to get to alberta to buy it? Will we have enough time? Will we have enough money? Will we be able to find something we want?
And then, vegetable oil conversion! Adding tanks and fuel pumps and fuel lines and filters and switches! And figuring out how to process the oil for ourselves!
I'm mostly excited, mildly apprehensive.
And we've already been confirmed as vendors at the dawson city music festival, so there's no looking back. Here goes.

Busking Zine: Done!

2011-04-04T11:30:00.003-04:00

Ta-Da!
If anyone wants a paper copy, it's here:
http://www.etsy.com/listing/71453366/busking-zine-1

Or, if you're not a buying-stuff-on-the-webs type, just email me and i'll send you one.
Hooray!

Busking Zine pages 21-24!

2011-04-01T13:04:00.002-04:00

Busking Zine pages 17-20

2011-03-30T14:30:00.000-04:00

The zine's finally done! The rest of it will be up shortly! An actual paper version will be available by the weekend.
Woot!

A compromise, one of many, necessary?

2011-03-22T13:54:00.004-04:00

So i've been sort of following this minor debacle in hfx where some folks had an offensively themed party and then didn't respond well to the suggestion that they were being shitty. (http://unbeatablehigh.blogspot.com/ march 18-21)

I recently had a similar situation where i tried to call someone out on using the word "faggot" inappropriately. It was a long, painfully drawn out conversation, which started with that person arguing that people just "shouldn't be so sensitive" and ended with him finally conceding my point and, hilariously, whining about how harsh i'd been with him. Apparently gay people shouldn't be so sensitive about him reclaiming slur words for them, but he's totally allowed to be sensitive about having his privilege and ignorance pointed out to him. Right.

So anyway, i've been thinking about this thing a lot, this "what is the correct amount of 'harsh' to use on people who are somewhere in the range of ignorantly offensive to blatantly and deliberately offensive?" question.

I think this is what i've got it narrowed down to:

1. People who are using oppressive language are not the ones who deserve sympathy. Everyone is capable of thinking about the consequences of their actions and they should already be doing that.

2. That being said, i think it's possible to tell someone clearly that something they've done is offensive or inappropriate without decimating them. I feel like there's times when i need to be reminded to think about my language (i had a good conversation lately about use of the word "crazy" in daily speech, ie) and i know that it doesn't take much to make me rethink my actions, and that a really harsh judgement would probably just make me feel really guilty and awkward and miserable when that's not necessary.

3. That being said, if you're gentle and someone doesn't get it, it's fair and necessary to step it up.

4. THAT being said, even if i think someone does deserve decimating, i've learned that the more you humiliate someone, the more reluctant they are to admit they're wrong. Especially in situations where the person you're calling out isn't a friend and their friends probably think their behaviour is fine, they might easily react by just disagreeing with you. If the goal is actually to make a person stop being a douchebag, this means that some degree of tact is necessary. All-out attack will probably just enable them to write you off as a psychopath or fascist or whatever.

5. So even though i sometimes fantasize about bottling people like that, i try to be as approachable as i can when i'm talking to them about their behaviour, even if i think they're being incredibly inconsiderate and deserve no sympathy whatsoever. The situation extends beyond me and them and i don't want to reinforce their already somewhat present disrespect or even hatred of whatever group they're disrespecting.

I think the conversation i had (referenced above) barely managed to be a success, only because i barely managed to reformulate my rage into something more like bluntness. Despite the fact that this person didn't deserve to have their hand held through the process of admitting they were wrong, that was probably the only way to get them to admit they were wrong, which was my goal.

Typewriter: Icon of OPPRESSION

2011-03-20T23:10:00.006-04:00

Dandy and i had a table at a "tea" at an old folks' home today. It was effin awesome. We spent the whole time making a list of things we wanna do when we get old. Like refuse to wear your false teeth even though you've only got three real ones left. Or make cozies for your walker. Or (admittedly probably unknowingly) pop the collar on your dress shirt/sweater vest combination. Or wear bright red lipstick. And, old folks are just great humans. They have lots of time. They care about other people and what they're doing. They appreciate craft and resourcefulness. Some of the people we met today looked over our stuff soooo thoroughly and genuinely and thoughtfully, and were so engaging.. awwwwww!

And, we had this really fascinating conversation with this woman about typewriters! We've got a few things we make that have typewriters on them, and i generally think of a typewriter as appealing as a symbol of creativity or whatever, and well, they're pretty hip, but this lady DETESTED them!

And rightly so, she says someone advised her as a girl never to learn to type, because once men figure out you can type that's the only job you ever get. And who wants to be stuck being someone's freaking secretary their whole lives? I never even thought about it that way. But there was a time when this was very true. Hmm!

busking zine pages 13-16!

2011-03-18T15:57:00.002-04:00

also: things not to do while trying to draw tiny details: drink coffee, argue with people on the internet and get really angry at them, do chin-ups, play accordion. none of these things are good for delicate motor skills. and yet for some reason i did them all.

There is probably no hope.

2011-03-14T12:25:00.004-04:00

This is happenning..
http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/14220
http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/14214

I feel like i need to educate myself, right now, about cops, how to deal with them, how to best act in solidarity with people being fucked with by them. Because while i wouldn't like to think of myself as one of the depressing majority that did NOTHING to come to the aid of the folks singled out in this case, and others, i could see myself being confused and sort of paralyzed and in actuality being one of those people.

Not that i like demos or have any inclination to go to them.

Lately i've been incredibly cynical about "awareness raising", public demos, etc. not that i condemn it all. But i can't bring myself to believe that a measurable amount of the general population notices, and if they did most of them would want the cops to crack down anyways.

Fuck society. Fuck social change.
I feel like the only remaining plausible courses of action might be isolationism and/or direct attack.

Anyway, whatever. back to the busking zine tomorrow.

Busking zine pages 9-12!

2011-03-13T13:30:00.002-04:00

busking zine! pages 5-8

2011-03-11T12:28:00.002-04:00

hooray!
sorry this took a couple days.. i ended up working 16 hours a day for the last two days and didn't really get anything else done. but here it is now!

Busking Zine! Issue 1!

2011-03-08T13:27:00.004-04:00

After months (months!) of work, it's almost done. Here's the first four pages. I'll try and put four up every day for the next week.

in exile: busking

2011-03-02T11:33:00.003-04:00

yesterday i had yet another shitty experience busking, which finally pushed me over the edge. i don't do that in this city anymore. on a good day i have a few nice interactions while being consciously ignored by the shitheads in suits that pass me on a daily basis and yet somehow still won't make eye contact. to be fair, i have a few positive interactions with people in suits. statistically, though, it's unlikely.

most of the time the weirdos and homebums, ie people who aren't suits, are really nice, and interactions with them are what keeps me feeling like a human being. but then occasionally they ask me for money, which is fine, or steal my money, which is not fine, or get up in my face trying to get me to kiss them, which is not fine, or leer at me and tell me that playing accordion is "hot", not fine, or pretend to shoot me in the face with their hand, at point blank, as they walk past, not fine, or give me a nickel "to wash my panties with", whatever the fuck that fucking means, not fine, or, yesterday, stand right beside me panhandling to people i'm trying to get money out of myself, and when i ask them nicely to give me a little more space than one metre, stand there and threaten/intimidate/insult me/threaten to take my money/take my shit/kick me in the face/etc, imitate me, mock me, say every nasty thing about me that they can think of to everyone who's passing by, and just generally demean me, until i finally left.

what frustrates me even more about it, aside from no longer feeling comfortable with doing the one thing that most reliably makes me self-sufficient, is that the only way i could have solved that situation was to get someone to call the fucking biz, who are a bunch of overgrown teenagers pretending to be cops, being abusive and shitty and having no accountability, and who generally exist to power-trip on homeless folks and panhandlers.

so i really wanted to be like, "you're putting me into a situation where the only way i can make myself feel safe is to validate these shitty people that will abuse you." which sounds like blaming the victim to me, but i don't really know how else to analyze this.

part of why this whole thing is so disturbing to me is it's instilled a genuine fear in me of native homebums, because that's who it is, every time. i don't really know how to deal with the fact that i'm developing a fear and hatred of a visible minority. it's not nice. i guess i can balance that with my understanding of the history that created this context. i'm never sure whether to put myself into the same category as someone who feels alienated by most of society and frequently gets treated like something less than human by most of society, or into the category of white privileged person who's making it even harder for this native lady who's already dealing with the infinite effects of colonization, and alcoholism, and probably a low/no income.

i don't want to feel oppressed by everyone including people who are even more fucked than i am, but i also don't want to play the role of "poor suffering white girl with an education from a middle class background who can't play her accordion because of all the panhandlers scaring her away."

i could go on about this forever. i don't know what to say. but i'm not busking in this city anymore.

I've finally emerged from the darkness of winter.

2011-02-26T17:33:00.003-04:00

I've had a few weeks of being sometimes okay and sometimes not, (a huge improvement over the previous couple months of not feeling like a human being at all), but yesterday (or the day before?) i was suddenly completely confident that i was okay again,
that if something brings me down it will be temporary,
that i won't need to hide in bed for days at a time,
that i care about everything again,
that i'm willing to go out at night,
that i'm consumed again by a fiery desire to do everything.

nothing has changed, in a physical sense,
except that i'm finally above the surface of the water, and no longer afraid of slipping below it,
and that a problem is now only a problem, and i no longer have to worry about it breaking that delicate thread supporting all of my emotional weight.

so i realised that, while i was at my desk painting a sign for our distro, and actually cried because i was so glad.
i'm so glad to be back, i'm so glad to be back.

I'm deliberately taking the most cynical slant i can on this....

2011-02-09T14:56:00.004-04:00

International Development!

In which a bunch of privileged kids from the west/northern hemisphere teach english in a foreign country to make their jet setting and fetishization of other cultures look edgy and progressive.

In which a bunch of people from the north FLY (at huge environmental expense) to the south to help people there build basic structures which anyone could build, including the people who are living there and will be using those structures. Often privileged volunteers have to be trained before they can be useful, but for some reason they don't just train people WHO ARE ALREADY THERE instead.

In which a bunch of privileged kids from the west/northern hemisphere get jobs or paid volunteering positions at ngos in the south which lots of local people in that area are not only qualified to do but who probably also understand better how to do that job in a way that makes sense in that specific place.

In which a bunch of religious nuts go and impose their guilt and ignorance on people who were doing just fine without it.

In which a bunch of overdeveloped westerners who would probably die within months if they didn't have running water and electricity go to "underdeveloped", relatively sustainable places, "teach" the locals how to live better, often with no real consideration for their means or their most immediate needs, and go home feeling smug because they took cold showers for a few months and survived.

In which a bunch of white people go to exotic places to learn exotic things for a few months, mostly hang out with other white people, and then go home and feel really worldly when they tell their friends about it.

In which privigeled north americans go to south america to buy knock offs of traditional south american crafts, made in sweatshops, which they could have just bought in north america or on the internet, and then take them home and tell their friends all about their "authentic" experience and knowledge of that culture

Not to say that every attempt to "help the underprivileged" is entirely ego-driven, wasteful, counterproductive, ethnocentric, racist or classist. But lots of them are lots of those things.

And really, do we really need more development?
I just want someone to figure out how to de-develop north america back down to something sustainable.

disclaimer: someone i know has made the point that critiquing international development on the grounds that we're a bunch of idiots and folks in the third world know what's up is also sort of a fetishization/idealization of "the other". this can be true.

oh hai can we be friends kthx bye.

2011-02-03T01:13:00.002-04:00

sometimes when i'm walking around the neighborhood i see folks who are wearing all black, but who don't have what i think of as the typical anarchist aesthetic. usually they're either native folks or people who maybe look like they listen to hip hop or something. but, when i see the all-black uniform, i instinctively hope that we are somehow on the same side, that maybe they also have some anarchist tendencies, whether or not they identify as anarchists. (native folks do have, afterall, even more reasons to hate the gov than the rest of us)

i also have this reaction to neck tattoos. there's just something about a neck tattoo that says "i don't give a fuck," and i kinda secretly like it.

of course, i could be entirely wrong about all of this, and if the shit hits the fan i probably shouldn't just assume that i can trust everyone who wears black.

but still. it's strangely reassuring.

working vs being employed

2011-01-31T12:00:00.003-04:00

okay, so i got a job. i'm not going to talk about that because my job is not my life and i refuse to acknowledge its presence beyond the necessary (being there, getting paid.)

what's sort of depressing about it is i make almost as much in two hours of busking as i do in a six hour shift of the job.

and the job conflicts with the busking. this may not last long.

but, something exciting, after existing for almost a year and receiving daily attention from us for two or three months, our (dandy's and my) etsy store is starting to be active pretty regularly. until this month we sold about one thing per month. in january we sold ten?

which means we're still not rich (only two of those sales were worth more than 2.50 to us) but that we're gradually becoming self-sustainable. fuck you, employment. this relationship is doomed to fail and i can't wait.

The last obstacle to winter biking is no more.

2011-01-23T11:55:00.003-04:00

I realized yesterday that when your fingers freeze when you're biking, it's because you're grabbing the handlebars too tightly. (assuming the problem isn't that yr gloves suck). Yesterday i biked around a bunch and it was -39 or something, and my fingers were fine. (in fact, i noticed them getting cold at one point and managed to warm them up by wiggling them.)
Who knew.

Also, last night i dreamt that i was biking somewhere and the sun was still completely up, even though it was at least five-thirty, and it made me incredibly happy. It lifted ten layers of darkness out of me.

There is no such thing as automatic community

2011-01-17T13:24:00.002-04:00

When someone first said it, i was outraged; "There is no such thing as community. Community is a lie."
I thought, community is all i have, and it's the only thing that makes me still want to be alive, and you're attacking it.

But after thinking about this for a long time, revision is necessary.

In the same sense that i would not call people i happen to end up hanging out with every so often my "friends", the people i see on a regular basis are not my "community".

It's only when i know someone well, personally, care about them and care for them and vice versa that i'd call them a friend, and it's only when that relationship exists with a group that i would call that group community.

My new optimism:
When the interactions that we lazily perceive as community fail to protect us, or when people within that very community do shitty things to us, this doesn't mean that there is no community. We can't assume that acquaintances are community, the fact that we listen to the same music or go to the same shows or identify with the same lifestyles means nothing, but that doesn't mean that there's no community. It means that the community we have is the people we've fostered close, caring relationships with, and that those are the people we ought to be able to rely on. It means that we need to make the effort to know each other and know the needs of our friends and be there for them and that this is our community.

My new negativism:
I have moved to a city where i only feel that close to one person. This is my own fault for not making friends with more people. (It's not that there's no one else i want to be close to.) This goes beyond my own fault because i was raised with horrible social skills in a hostile environment and while i have become aware of that and the problems it poses, i haven't completely taught myself how to socialize comfortably yet. And maybe that's just one of those things that shapes you.

Conclusion: community is possible, but it must be actively formed, and i don't think i have it right now.

I wrote a personal mission statement

2011-01-16T12:28:00.002-04:00

It's complicated.

this is a list of goals, none of which are actually attainable in a literal and complete sense.
they're written with the understanding that life (especially life within a capitalist economy) is compromise, and that to achieve a goal partially is not a failure as long as you're constantly working to improve your achievement of it, and pushing as far as you can with it.

* to free myself from the constraints of capitalism (the neccessity of a "job", the pressure through the media to buy unneccesary things, the presence of exploitation in most of our economic interactions)
* to make a living and get the things i need to survive without exploiting or contributing to the exploitation of anyone or anything. (including animals and the environment)

* once these have become stable qualities in my life, to help enable others to achieve the same, as well as their own goals
* to use art, and music, and beauty, as a means to remind people of the value of these goals, using specific examples.
* to always share my skills and knowledge in order to empower other people rather than using my knowledge as a weapon to keep them subjugated to me.
* to offer people the resources and opportunities to actualize their own dreams and creativity and escape from the constraints of capitalism (the necessity of having a "job", of being convinced that you need to buy a lot of things that you don't really need) without doing it for them, ie to help them become independent people of their own doing.
* to use non-oppressive language, and also to be non-oppressive.

what this means in specifics:
* to become entirely self-employed and make a living only through donations or sliding scale prices
* to be willing to give things away for free
* to only make and sell things that are entirely recycled and entirely sweatshop free, and entirely locally sourced.
* to get a truck and convert it to vegetable oil, and a camper, and convert the camper into a silkscreening studio/artists' residence that i can both use myself and also bring to people who would like to have a quiet, personal space to be creative in, and also use that vehicle to travel to various bookfairs, zine and small press fairs, and small music festivals
* to offer skillshares and workshops to others to help them to learn anything i know that they want to learn, and to write zines with sort of a similar goal. (as well, to simply write zines documenting things that i experience that i think are funny/interesting/inspiring/important/tragic/terrible etc)

on a more personal level:
* to achieve the most humility possible
* to be fearless
* to never make anyone feel guilty, ever
* to be as positive as possible
* to be as realistic as possible
* to have an incredible sense of humour because almost everything that can cause me to lose my humility, to be afraid, to make others feel guilty, or to be negative can also be seen as amusing instead.
* to be ready to rethink everything, including this mission statement.

Anarcho-Capitalists!

2011-01-03T13:05:00.002-04:00

Yes, i always thought it was a joke. But, then i got myself a table at an anarchist-run holiday craft sale. Now, what the hell does that mean?

In practice? That there were no assigned places, that vendors had to problem-solve any issues together (as a group of folks working together towards a common cause, as opposed to as competitors) rather than relying on a boss-lady to tell us what to do. That the live entertainment, instead of shlocky christmas music, was live and ranging from neutral to leftist politics. That some of the vendors had sort of alternative or radical content. That junto (the local radical lending library) got a table. That the merch there was (theoretically) local/handmade, although that's (theoretically) true at all craft sales.

So, offering a venue for local people to be self-employed and self-empowered, that's pretty great.
Encouraging people to buy local, handmade, sweatshop free, etc, that's good.
But how many of the materials used by the vendors are truly local/sweatshop free etc?
How much of the content of the stuff being sold was really in any way radical or anarchist?
And is a holiday shopping spree really anarchist?

Here are the reasons i'm still skeptical:

1) what's driving us over the edge is EXCESS. how many of the things one sees at a craft sale are unneccesary? how much of it was made with new material? is consuming these things in any way anarchist? (if i stop for a minute and envision the magical, mythical world where capitalism is gone, i could imagine folks making things to trade or give to each other and while most of it would be useful things like food etc, i think there'd still be a place for art.. but it would have to be made in a way that's respectful of the places the supplies are coming from, for starts.)

2) while we do need to have money to survive, this doesn't necessitate total compromise. we can make money selling things without being assholes about it. i really like the idea, for example, of sliding scale. i really like the idea of "pay what you want". i like the idea of taking the buyer's means into consideration when figuring out what they should pay for something. i like the idea of bartering.

So, the sale was interesting. Most of the folks there did seem to be selling things they'd made themselves, as opposed to being some sort of "middleman" (a loathsome human being and a capitalist of the worst kind). So that was good.

Things i'd love to see at future anarchist craft sales, though?
- skillshares! fuck shopping, learn how to knit and make scarves instead. or whatever.
- more visible promotion of local shopping and recycled products, explaining that there's more to shopping local than just kitcsh or (barf) nationalism. (ie buying local doesn't incur the environmental damage of shipping overseas or across the country) i really like the idea of buying local things (when you have to buy them at all) but really hate how that too is being absorbed into "green capitalism" (barf) so that's becoming sort of a touchy and complicated thing to promote properly.
- flexible pricing. set a sliding scale that can accomodate a wide range of incomes. my experience is that most people will aim for the middle or top.
- more encouragement of bartering.

So what's the point of this long ramble?
My usual point: An anarchist craft sale is sort of a compromise, but we're living a life of compromise so it's, in it's context, not a bad idea. (and that this doesn't mean we should embrace it whole-heartedly, it means we should not destroy it, but work to improve it, and use it as a tool to break down shit that really needs to go, like mindless, selfish, destructive consumerism)

I feel a bit like a liberal. I'm not entirely convinced of what i'm saying. Please help?

.

Colonization. In the Present Tense.

2010-12-30T17:41:00.005-04:00

Something else that i've been thinking about lately, which i posted about on my other blog and which i'm apparently not done with yet, because here i am doing it again.

I was kind of disturbed to see a white girl selling a headdress at an anarchist craft sale a couple weeks ago.
(okay wait, anarchist craft sale? yeah i know. here are the fabled anarcho-capitalists we all thought were a joke. and i was one of them. hah! more about that fascinating contradiction later.)

I'm not going to outline the whole conversation i had with her about it, most of it is covered here
http://nativeappropriations.blogspot.com/2010/04/but-why-cant-i-wear-hipster-headdress.html
(i really recommend reading this, hits the sketchy racist nail right on the head)

She did have a few unique arguments, like that "we are all indigenous, because we were all born here", at which point i sort of just wanted to vomit all over her feathery handiwork and changed my tone from "have you ever considered..." to "that is racist, whitewashing bullshit".

I think the conversation ended when she tried to justify the whole thing by telling me how she made a dreamcatcher all by herself and then her "native friend" came over and saw it and said she'd magically found the right kind of wood to use. Clearly her 1/8 cherokee blood justifies everything. Clearly "their" gods smile down on her and approve. Vomit vomit vomit.

Anyway, the whole thing served to remind me of how fucked up it is that most people swallow the whole "Canada did some bad things while they were settling the country but colonialism is over and now the natives are all integrated, all the better for them, and everything is fine" argument. It always reminds me of the drunk person who says they USED TO be an alcoholic, but that they quit, and that the mickey in their hand is fine because they're better now. (no disrespect to folks dealing with alcoholism)

Just to be clear:

1. White folks continue to colonize Canada. Ongoing problem.
2. Any action we take that moves control over the public image, iconography, culture, history, etc, of first nations groups into our hands (ie white people making headdresses) is aiding in the colonization of those peoples.

There are times when people make art that's inspired by other cultures' art and claim that this is an homage, that it's a sign of respect, etc, and while a lot of the time this is clearly not true (the comic linked in that blog post up there is a great example), i'm not going to say that it's never, ever, ever true. However, there's a difference between being inspired or influenced by something and doing a cheap knock off of it to sell (or an overpriced bougie knock-off for that matter), and there's also a difference between being inspired or influenced by a culture and stereotyping a culture. So that gets complicated?

Then there's white people wearing first nations' traditional stuff, like mukluks, for example. When i see folks wearing these i (cynic that i am) tend to cringe and mutter "cultural appropriation" under my breath, but the truth is that there are lots of first nations artists in winnipeg that make mukluks, and lots of white folks that support them by buying them, and maybe that's not such a bad thing. But still complicated. Like, are you wearing those boots because you want to demonstrate that you are in solidarity with first nations folks, or because you like fetishizing other cultures that you actually know and care very little about, because it's edgy?

Life, so far, is Compromise

2010-12-30T13:19:00.003-04:00

I spend a lot of time analyzing what i'm doing and whether it's contributing to or remaining neutral to the major problems with mainstream society, the planet being fucked over, etc.

I just spent a month making crafts of all kinds and selling them at craft sales.
Is this useful?

Being self-employed, if it's not fucking over other human beings, (horrible people, horribly rich people, and corporations excluded) is probably better than being employed. The last two jobs i've had have basically been focussed on pampering the rich and i don't really like encouraging shit like that. These excesses are the ones that are making us as a species unsustainable. Fuck fancy restaurants and fuck nice hotels.

So being self-employed is kind of useful. Making a living by selling things i've made myself to people who really appreciate them is way less dehumanizing than reciting the script that comes with almost every job that involves public interaction. ("would you like the meal deal or just the sandwich? would you like lottery tickets with your fuel? pickles, lettuce, tomatoes, onions?")

And making shit that's recycled is alright. I feel alright about that.
Although none of it is very, very necessary shit. But life is not just about stark survival. Inspiration is important. So, grey area.

But ironically, one of the things that i sell the most of is shitty junk jewelry, the parts come from michaels (the big megacorporation craft supply store) and are probably made in a sweatshop or something, (i don't pay for them, but that doesn't make me feel that much better about them) and all i really do is attach part A to part B with a little wire loop, and ta-da! a necklace!

And yeah, i sell a lot of those. Those are the little things that fill in the financial gaps between the occasional rug or wind chime or whatever.

This is fine, this is survival.

But then the other day (on solstice, actually) dandy and i went for breakfast at the black sheep, and from the table beside us, one girl to the other, "aw, that's so nice, thanks!"

And i look over, and lo and behold, i'm witnessing someone giving someone else something i made, neither one knows that i have anything to do with it, and they're both excited about it!

And, it's a shitty piece of micheals junk jewelry.

And so it goes.

The Darkest Day of the Year Approaches

2010-12-16T11:42:00.003-04:00

I don't like the "disorder" part of "seasonal affective disorder". (also, what a shitty acronym!). I feel pretty affected by how much sunlight/daylight i'm getting but i don't really feel the need to paint it as some huge flaw of mine, or as a horrible weakness. I just spend more time in bed, expect a little less of myself, rely on my friends a little more to keep me going.

And, that's the thing i've been figuring out lately. I spent some time reading old journals, thinking back over the past few years, and the times when i've been really unexcited about everything, right down to existing in the first place, are times when i'm not spending quality time with other human beings.

Winnipeg has been tough because i'm not super close to many people here yet. (other than a certain amazing person who i love dearly).

I miss being able to walk down the street and hang out in the kitchen with a bunch of other kids who also don't work and like to hang out and make art and play music. I miss the ones who are always making things and finding reasons to get people together, I miss that one who's always joyfully making strange things out of ceramics, i miss that one who stayed up all night telling me wonderful stories about his family, i miss that one who checked in on me when i seemed particularly depressed, i miss the one who crisply and politely asked the most direct questions, i miss the one that would get so excited about everything and play fiddle like a madman, i miss all the kids taking photos and lovingly documenting things, i miss the one i played very old nintendo games with, i miss the calm, joyful way those other ones were ready to subvert everything, as though it was only natural to do so, i miss the strange electronic creations of my favourite computer genius, i miss the one i often drank tea with, listening to their complicated and wonderful analyses of class and oppression, i miss that one that i made a rap album with, who lovably does whatever the fuck she wants, i miss that one who seemed so quiet and complacent but always remembered the crowbar when we went where we weren't supposed to, i miss the one who couldn't walk down the stairs from my apartment without jumping most of them and doing a ninja-like 360 on the way down, i miss that one who introduced me to the idea of listening to two tapes at the same time, and the one i played ping pong in the bathroom with, and the ones who dressed up ridiculously just to go stand on the corner and confuse people. just to name a few.

These are the people that reflect my excitement back to me and keep it alive. these are the people whose actions excite me. I miss you all dearly.

It's 30 below!

2010-12-13T15:27:00.003-04:00

This is the existence i've dreaded for the last few months. maybe even since i moved here. possibly since i first thought of moving here.

After ten minutes outside, my scarf is frosty and i can't feel my fingers and toes. There's ice on the INSIDES of the doors and walls of the house.

But i'd forgotten! I'd totally forgotten how clear the air seems when it's this cold, how everything sparkles when it's coated in ice, the beautiful angle of winter light, the way snow muffles everything like a blanket, the way untouched snow glitters, and reminds me of being a kid and walking around in winter, of the icy eternity of prairie in winter and how much respect i have for it, and how much bigger and older and more important it is than this foul city and the people crawling all over it.

And, i'd forgotten how much more of a pleasure it is to arrive, when you've worked hard to get there. I walked into the drag on saturday to pick up food not bombs and was so pleased to see so many people i knew, and so happy to just sit down with them, and the cold outside, rather than being oppressive, just made me enjoy their company even more.

Maybe i'll be less excited when it's 40 below. But so far, so good.

How to get a "Sick Pack"; Three Easy Steps!

2010-12-04T00:02:00.003-04:00

1. Get a cold or flu.. preferably something that will make you cough a lot and be very uninterested in food.
2. Cough a lot, for a few days. Make sure to use all your abdominal muscles while coughing. You'll know you're doing a good job when your ribs start to hurt.
3. For the same few days, be nauseous, eat very little.

Ta-da! I have emerged from my sleepingbag/cocoon after three days and there they are, subtle but clearly there, the thing that every beach goer would die to have: nicely defined and clearly visible stomach muscles. All i had to do was suffer a few days of fever, headache and miserable hacking coughs from the depth of my lungs. I can't wait until the fashion industry finds a way to market this.

Next week: How to find out what your man ~really~ wants!

[this is all a joke. except that i have been miserably sick and did wake up with creepily well-defined ab muscles this morning. and so it goes.]

[oh, and, i'm getting better. hooray!]

Winterbiking in Winterpeg: an Incredibly Angry Tirade.

2010-11-30T17:51:00.005-04:00

It snowed two weeks ago. There's lots of snow. The roads are rarely clean. Everyone's driving about half as fast as usual.

I feel like i'm a pretty considerate cyclist; while i do bike pretty defensively and take enough space to be safe, i'm pretty good about not blocking traffic, about communicating what i'm doing, signaling, etc, and, in these conditions, if i do have to take a lane in order to bike safely, i actually stop every so often to let cars get around me.

(In summer i bike in the parking lane, despite the fact that i'm constantly dodging the doors of people who can't get it through their heads to look before opening them. But in winter that part of the road is icy and uneven, and if i try biking there i'll basically end up bailing and possibly getting run over. )

Despite my being as considerate as i possibly can be, and despite the fact that the real problem is simply that the roads are terrible, and that i'm not affecting that grand picture very much by being there, (how long do i possibly hold anyone up? thirty seconds? a minute?) people say and do rude, borderline psychopathic things to me, every day. I constantly get screamed at by poor, suffering souls who have to drive 20 instead of 30 for a block or two until they can pass me. I get screamed at by people who could easily just pass me right there but for some reason still feel like it's necessary to honk at me and then try to THREATEN me with their VEHICLE by driving up beside me at my speed and then moving over towards me. (what the fuck! who threatens a human being with, literally, a ton, of metal?!). I get screamed at by some ignorant fuck for "not following the rules", (read, running a red light when the coast was clear, to GET AWAY from the traffic, which is to their advantage as well as mine.) I catch up with them, politely ask them if they were trying to communicate something, explain this, and am graced with more childlike profanity and then the person in question speeding away. I get screamed at, god knows why, for biking IN THE BIKE LANE on a bridge with two lanes for cars available and almost no other traffic.

Cyclists don't stop having rights just because the weather changes. Dear Winnipeg drivers: Fuck You. I hope you all die in a cancerous cloud of exhaust.

You are making me not want to leave my house. You are contributing to my winter depression. Although i've managed to be calm when i get the chance to actually have a talk with one of you self-centered fucks, you are making me incredibly angry. There are times when i feel like by the end of the winter i will either murder or be murdered by one of these people in a fit of rage which could come from either side, and the odds are not looking up for me, as i travel on a much smaller weapon.

p.s.: i know that some drivers are not assholes. for the love of god, please show yourselves before i lose all faith in humanity.

Wait! i Lied!

2010-11-24T00:25:00.003-04:00

Having another blog that's strictly about things i'm making made me miss having a blog where i can wax philosophical. or whatever.
So, i'm not getting rid of this one. They can both exist. Hooray!

Over the last month i've been really focussed on building up my etsy store, and preparing for three holiday craft sales.
This might appear to be sort of uncharacteristic for someone who thinks that capitalism is inherently violent and consumerism is driving everything to destruction.

Sort of.

It's interesting trying to achieve, well, survival, and ideally autonomous survival (as opposed to being someone's employee), without "selling out". It's interesting thinking about things like how to sell my product and how to find my niche market while being fully aware that some (most?) of the things i make are useless material comforts, and that i'm selling them to, (read: comforting) people who are pretty privileged and might need something other than more comforts in their lives.

I could argue that almost everything i make is recycled, (hooray, we will save the environment and planet through tokenistic liberal environmentalism, etc etc!!!!!) but let's not fool ourselves. Recycled useless material products are still useless material products.

(there is an argument to be made for the value of beauty, or art, or whatever, which i do believe in sometimes. this is a whole other issue and i'm not going to tangle it into this one right now)

The truth, in the end, is that we are all already sold out, and that we need to do what we need to do.
This doesn't mean that everything is hopeless and that we should give up on all the ethical standards we try to hold ourselves to. This just means that i'd rather pay my rent by doing something which is not inherently radial than pay my rent by doing something not radical AND oppressive. (be employed).

The bad news is that nothing is perfect. The good news is that there is sooooo much exciting work to be done.

My Other Blog is a Mercedes.

2010-11-09T16:55:00.003-04:00

Er, i mean, tumblr.
This blog is being phased out. my new one is a shared blog with dandy and we're basically using it to try and document every single thing we make. which is ambitious, because we make a lot of stuff.
Check it out:
http://www.ofcourseyoucandistro.com

Crusty Hairstyle Win!

2009-03-05T13:05:00.007-04:00

In case anyone's unsure about this, i had this haircut before i found the comic.
The only thing i really don't have is the dreadlocks. anymore.

soooooo.... i guess this means i'm a crustpunk?

oh, and check out the zine this came from!

2008-11-19T13:20:00.000-04:00

An Illustrated Guide to Bird-Calls

2008-11-05T14:34:00.003-04:00

un projet pour expozine. c'est un photo, pas un scan, donc c'est pas tres clair.
(mais, sans un scanner, qu'est-ce qu'on peut faire?)

Le chose complet sera un groupe de probablement 4 images, avec descriptions de les chansons de les oiseaux dans les dessins.

... si je peux faire un ecran de seriagraphie avec cette dessin. c'est possible que c'est trop detaillée. (eeerrrrrg..... )

Burning Stuff to Save the Environment! Flipbook Music Vid!

2008-11-03T09:59:00.003-04:00

Biochar! Pyrolyxis!

the words roll off the tongue so smoothly...

what's it all about? burning stuff in a way that doesn't release CO2, but instead leaves little lumps of carbon which then could help enrich the soil? HMM!

Aaaaaand a great music vid directed by Andre Maat & Superelectric for Kraak & Smaak.

(found on Drawn!)

The internet has returned! (to me)

2008-11-03T09:38:00.002-04:00

So nice to be able to read the news from under the blankets again!

(especially now that it's cold out.) (and, invariably, in.)

So, now it's convenient to put stuff up here again..

I've been trying to decide what to do with this blog for a while now, since i'm no longer in Bolivia.

The things i've come up with are:

- an art blog (basically i'll put up a drawing every day.)

- a second language blog (i think i need to write in french and spanish if i want to push those languages to a new level.)

- maybe still a little bit of info about what i'm up to (i'm sure my mom, at least, still wants to know)

- a way to reference/pass on stuff i find on the internet that excites me.

So, i think i'm gonna generally aim for these things, and see which ones end up working out.

If anyone is still reading this (after months of inactivity i've got humble expectations), give me your thoughts?

montreal!

2008-05-31T16:48:00.005-04:00

i walked down the street to get a coffee.

i pass through the middles of a bunch of conversations in the amazing version of french that exists here and which i associate, strangely, with being at "home".

old men on a balcony smoking and talking about things that, from the sound of it, they talked about yesterday and will talk about tomorrow.

there's street work being done. it looks like a war zone. it's hard to know what's "finished" and what's not, because most montreal streets look like war zones most of the time.

i pass a bike shop with a sign that says "lesbian haircuts! 15$ (and bike shop)"

I pause entranced by a row of badass multicoloured biking hats. you know those little brimmed hats.

walking back with coffee, a guy ahead of me drops something that he'd been inspecting back onto a pile of garbage. i feel bad that i might have disturbed him. he's about my age. his pants are higher than your average pants, but he seems to be wearing a suit, minus jacket. ahead of him is a kid maybe 12 or 14, in a hoodie. ahead of the kid are two guys in green combat pants and black death metally looking shirts. we're walking along the sidewalk like a little caravan. no one speaks except the old men on the balcony.

the kid reaches up and slaps the bottom of a no parking sign as he passes, and the guy in the too high pants follows suit. i smile. the kid in the hoodie smiles. i still like montreal.

(i realize i've neglected to talk about any of the process of me getting back here.. i'll write about that soon! i think i have (a little) time now!)

ortografia? gramatica? accentos? que? (o, "yo puedo escribir en espanol!")

2008-05-07T20:30:00.007-04:00

estoy on buenos aires.. finalemente yo he realizado que no tengo sufficiente tiempo para viajar mucho.. entonces yo tengo una semana aqui y todo es...
pero es interessante..

hay un zoo. yo he eschuchado alguien roaring adentro y yo voy manana para ver quien exactemente

yo fue sorprendido por unos cosas:
- limites de velocidad en los autopistas (he nunca visto eso en bolivia)
- y los autopistas son pavados!
- yo puedo beber la agua!
- toiletseats!
- (y aqui todavia nunca he visto gentes pissando o algo peor directamente en la calle, que raro!)
- calles sin los teleranas de telephone wires
- se cerran las puertas de los bus cuando son moviendo. hmm!

pero, no hay los desayunos de marcado de api y buneulos por dos bols. no hay musica feliz de todas partes. (pues... es feliz pero mas serio.. demasiado)
no hay perritos corriendo de todas partes, y no hay zumo de naranja fresco en casi cada esquina.
ahhh nada es perfecto.

o tal vez todo es perfecto. (es lo mismo, no?)

yo he visto un gigantesco flora metalico que se cerra en los noches y tiene solar panels para crear la energia para movarla.

yo he visto un parque con docenes de gatitos y he pasado un bueno tarde con una gatito extranjero calefactando mis piernas y haciendo para mi un poco de dolor con los, hmm, garras?, como hacen todos los gatos contentos.

yo he encontrado un bande que necesitan un bateria (baterieria??? umm) (yo no se si ese es como se llama la persona que toca la bateria o no, pero es esa persona que faltan)
y yo toco la bateria entonces por suerte yo he tenido la opportunidad de tocarla con ellos, woohoo! fue muy bueno..

yyyyy yo he perdido lo mismo bus dos veces aun saliendo de sucre.. una vez a la terminal, pues fue por taxi a un otro lugar para esperarlo, (eso es possible porque los taxis son mas rapidos que los bus, especialement cuando manejan como locos, y ese fue le caso)
pero yo casi he perdido lo mismo bus otra vez..
finalement yo he logrado de entrar en la bus despues de corriendo detras de dicho bus gritando "arrrrrrrrrrrgh no no no no!" y despues (todavia corriendo)(con todos mis cosas) rirando a mi mismo porque fue ridiculoso. (eventualement ha parado y yo he entrado)
voy a ser temprano por la bus de regreso :p

Observations bordering on feminist ranting...

2008-04-24T11:14:00.005-04:00

People talk about marriage a lot more in Bolivia than they do in Quebec. People will ask if you're married in the same kinds of situations in which they ask where you're from and what you're doing here. Most guys who seem to be interested in me will ask pretty early on in the conversation whether i´m married.

This is kind of surprising, in a way, because every woman i know who has kids is a single mom. The lady who cleans our house is a single mom. My boss is a single mom. I see partnerless moms on the streets asking for change all the time. I thought both the families we lived with were single mom families. It turns out one lady, who was visiting for a month and a half, actually has a husband in la paz. None of us ever saw him around here. I talked to my roommates about this and they were at first surprised and then thought about it and realized the same was true for most of the women they knew.

I think the way society percieves sex and marriage here is really unequal, as far as gender goes. There doesn't seem to be much pressure on men to deal with the consequences of their actions, ie actually help raise the children they father. But at the same time, there's this obsession with marriage, which seems to apply a lot more strongly to women, which seems to imply that sexual freedom for women here is kind of weak.

When guys ask me if i'm married, i guess this is a way of sounding out whether i'm available. I find this super weird, because the question, in my mind, should be whether i'm interested in them, not just whether i'm available. It seems like these guys care a lot more about whether or not some other guy has already laid claim to me than they do about my own volition.
Alright alright, patriarchy, objectification, blah blah blah, i'll stop before i start frothing at the mouth.

Hanging out with the kids in the parc

2008-04-20T13:17:00.007-04:00

I'd told my grandmother i'd buy her some gum here and send it to her.. (canadian gum is ridiculously intense, while bolivian gum is milder, the way she likes it)

So, saturday i went to the main plaza and hung out on a parc bench to find a chico selling chicles.

It's always like this when i go to the plaza: at first it's incredibly quiet, non-working kids (i think of them as tame kids) playing with balloons, a pair of tourists making out on the bench next to mine.

Nina, a girl i met the day before, shows up and we talk a little.

Then a little dude shows up wanting to sell us gum ("chicle?") (that's not a brand; all gum is chicle.)

Then an older kid, a shoe shiner, shows up to help him negotiate. I buy six packs of chicle and somehow a shoeshine gets worked into the deal.

While i'm getting my first shoe shine, (they're more or less skate shoes, they don't really need shining) three or four other kids show up. They sit on their shoe shine boxes and show Nina their WWF wrestling stickers. They try to sell them to her but she declines, as they've already been stuck. The kid shining my shoes spins the brush over the backs of his hands, twirls it, and whips the rag around like a pro, careful not to dirty my neon pink and neon green shoelaces.

I ask Christian, the kid selling gum, if i can take his picture. (for my grandmother)

I wasn't sure how this part was going to go, because in some situations people here will never let you take their picture. The two things i've especially wanted to photograph are the markets at Tarabuco and the dried llama foetuses at the mercado campesino, but every time i ask i get a sour look and a "no".

"Si!" says Christian, and everyone gets excited. I take his picture, he takes my picture, Nina gets out her camera and the boys start photographing us, themselves, each other, pigeons, stray dogs. They do cartwheels and handstands for the camera. After every photo they crowd around the camera to see how it came out. I get a list of email addresses and promise to email them all copies.

I get an impromptu quechua lesson. Cecilio, who i've gotten lessons from before, commandeers my slingshot (anarchist dayplanner, not weapon) and pen, and teaches me how to say "i speak quechua, i speak a bit of quechua, and i love you."

Nina and i decide to take the bus up to the mercado campesino, which is a huge outdoor market, and Ceci tells us to say we're universitarios because it's cheaper. He writes that down too. I know this but thank him anyway.

Nina is impressed that the kids can write. She comments that they all have the same supplies.

"Is there some kind of organization.." Nina asks..

"They're unionized!" I smile.. "The organizers are the older ones, 14 or 16. I don't know if it's totally collectivized.. i think it might be, because when one's working the others kind of help.."

"Yeah, there doesn't seem to be competition between them.."

"Exactly. And the union supplies the polish and everything."

I tell her about Nanta, the drop in center they go to, and we stop by Nanta on the way to the mercado. Nanta is operating at the usual level of chaos, kids running around, hanging out, playing soccer in the empty swimming pool. Vayu's there, we talk to him for a bit and Nina asks him about the center. A kid interrupts to try and sell him a chicken sandwich.

"I told you, i don't eat chicken. Here, go ask Franz, maybe he'll buy one"

Vayu is the only other resident vegetarian in sucre that i know of.

The conversation is interrupted again while Vayu rescues several kids from a tree. (or vice versa.)

The kid with the chicken sandwiches comes back.

"No.. I've told you five times-"

"Six, now"

"Okay, six times. I don't eat chicken."

We laugh, talk a little more, then go on to the mercado.

In the pictures: Christian is the kid with the hat and the sucker. Cecilio is the one with the popsicle.

the inspiration came last friday...

2008-04-17T09:17:00.003-04:00

click to get a better view....

worse things have happennned. it's not the first time i've had food poisoning, anyway.

Just try this in north america...

2008-04-14T10:16:00.002-04:00

I went to potosi two weekends ago with Isabelle and Adhemar.
We met in the bus terminal, bought our tickets for 15 Bols. If you do the math, it´s cheaper to take a three hour bus ride to the next city in Bolivia than it is to buy one ticket for the metro in Montreal. (or the subways in NYC or toronto).
Well, it would have been 18 bols with the bus terminal tax. But we didn´t pay that.

While we bought our tickets Adhemar asked what colour the bus would be and surprisingly, in light of why he was asking, they told him, "azul".
One thing i´ve learned about Bolivia is people are less fascistic about making a profit than they are in North America.
We left the bus station, hung a right, and proceeded to hang out on a street corner. I was sort of curious what we were doing.
"...Isn´t the bus leaving right now?"
"Yep. It´ll come from over there."
In five minutes or so, a blue bus came along, and we crossed to the side of the street it was on. A bunch of people, mostly from the country, were doing the same thing.
The bus slowed down, i won´t exactly say it stopped, and about eight of us climbed on. This, i´m told, is how you take the bus the Bolivian way.

If only this would work for airport taxes...

The Invisible Hand: The Black Market!

2008-04-10T10:01:00.002-04:00

I was listening to Revolver this morning, in mp3 format, and reflecting on the fact that when that album came out, Beatles fans had no choice but to actually buy the legitimate, legal album. Imagine!

This is especially strange to me in my present environment, because in all my time here i have not ever (ever!) seen a legal cd or dvd. Or computer software. Even if you wanted to buy a proper, legitimate cd, you really wouldn´t be able to. All cds in Bolivia are burnt, and come in a clear plastic sleeve with two pieces of paper: a colour photocopy of the front of the album and a black and white copy of the back. They cost around a dollar canadian.

We can look at this as an incredibly corrupt culture with no respect for copyrights, or we can analyze this from an economic viewpoint. The legal supply of the commodity is so expensive, read inaccessible, relative to the average income, that the demand has turned elsewhere: the black market! Aaaah, so THIS is the invisible hand Adam Smith was raving about!

Behold, free market economics in all its glory! If there was a little government regulation on the prices of CDs, or, you know, social welfare programs so people didn´t have to work for half a week (literally) to buy a CD, maybe the black market wouldn´t be thriving the way it is!

Not that i´m advocating buying CDs. Unless they´re independent. If they´re not you might as well download the thing and mail three bucks to the band, it´s more than they get from a major record label anyway.

Fashion Report: The Nineties Didn't End. (they just moved to south america)

2008-04-08T17:20:00.000-04:00

My first week in Bolivia, i spent a few days in bed getting over a stomach virus. The hotel TV was sympathetic and offered me a solid hour of Madonna music videos every afternoon. Nothing newer than "frozen" (that´s the sort of dark one from the mid nineties where she has black hair). Amazing! Just what the doctor ordered:

"You have a virus.. antibiotics won't really help, but i'll give you a prescription to calm your stomach. Don't eat anything spicy, stick to bread or rice or maybe chicken soup, nothing fried." (the infamous white diet) "Just relax and watch as many music videos from between the mid 80s and mid 90s as you can."
I´m sure he said that! But then again, i´d only been speaking spanish for a few days.

But really, if you're wondering where it went, it's all here. The clunky black dress shoes with unneccesarily thick soles, the straight, wideleg jeans, the smooth, longish sweaters, baby tees, the tees with random numbers on them in poor imitation of sports jerseys, the undercuts, the adidas tear away track pants...

I really enjoy this.. it's deliciously nostaligic for me. And more genuine than the "retro" 90's dance parties that are already starting to go down back in north america.

At the rate we're retrofying lately, fashion is practically eating its own tail.. we're like four year olds running in circles faster and faster.. i imagine us one day getting dizzy, stumbling around a bit, falling over and throwing up on the grass... and i can't wait to see how that metaphor looks in reality. (If you can call fashion reality).

wrote this friday, it's warmer now, the fleas haven't struck again

2008-04-07T09:42:00.001-04:00

I have bites, maybe fleas. it happens. both the girls i live with have had them. seven bites on my left hand and i suspect an eighth somewhere under my jeans, but no way am i taking off enough clothing to confirm that.

Because, it's cold. It's the warmest part of the day and i'm in my room, wearing hatscarfgloves(fingerless), two pairs of pants, snowboarding socks and legwarmers, long underwear, tee, longsleeved tee, sweater, hoodie. I hover over a jar of tea, praying to the steam and refusing to acknowledge that the day will only get colder.

I stopped at the supermarket on the way home at lunch and found myself in an awquard situation: my money was in the pocket of my -inside- pair of pants.

Ahhhh, but i don't like the supermarket anyway. They try to sell people on shopping there by promoting it as sort of a way to distinguish yourself. The slogan: "a way of life"

"a consumeristic, bourgeois, plastic way of life..." i sneer inside my own head while i slide my hand down the back of my pants and dig around nonchalantly for the pocket with my cash.

The good thing about it being cold, though, is there's not many places the fleas (if that's what they are) seem to be able to get to.

Probably they'll go away in a few days, they usually do. Probably it'll warm up in a few days, it usually does.

Who Cares? (demographically speaking)

2008-04-04T10:43:00.002-04:00

Sometimes i eat supper at a restaurant near my house, which is frequented about equally by locals and tourists. Around seven a kid usually comes in and plays flute and sings. He´s probably between 8 and 10. He starts with a preamble (good evening, enjoy your meal, i´m just gonna play you a bit of music, if you like it help me out with some change), which he´s obviously recited verbatim many times, which he delivers quickly and all in one breath. He usually plays the same three songs, while pacing around the restaurant. He plays and sings pretty well but never sounds like he´s really into it. He finishes with another very short speech more or less like the introductory one and then makes the rounds of the restaurant asking for change as unobtrusively as possible.
I like to pay attention to social demographics, so here they are: people who appear to be from here almost always give him change. His chances with them are probably 90 or 95%. Tourists, who probably have a much larger income, are a lot less likely to give him anything. I´d say he´s got about a 65% chance with them.
Also, anytime i see someone come into a restaurant and ask for food, the people working there will give them something.
Maybe foreigners feel like poverty here isn´t their problem because these people don´t belong to the same (artificially constructed) "nation" as them. Maybe they´re still operating on the first world belief that people asking for change are just lazy, despite the fact that here they´re mostly children, single mothers, or elderly, which (i think?) is not the same as lazy.
Maybe Bolivian culture is a little less individualistic, maybe there´s still a bit more of a sense of social solidarity here.
It's interesting, anyway. I´ve tried to imagine what would happen if this kid were to show up and play in a Canadian restaurant. Probably there´d be a franchise policy or something to justify kicking him out.

Similar situation: there´s a bunch of kids in Sucre right now who basically travel and juggle and sell handmade jewelry for a living. If i happen to be wearing my black hoodie and look low key enough they´ll treat me as an equal, but if i look any nicer i become a potential customer.
They´ll juggle in intersections during the red lights, and surprisingly, about half the cars that pass them when the light changes will give them some change. Compared to montreal´s squeegee punks, these kids are doing really, really well. And the situation is almost exactly the same, in terms of the quality of life and degree of relative poverty of everyone involved.

Anyway.. i guess what we in north america see as a socially acceptable level of generosity is a lot more arbitrary (and, well, stingy) than we might think.

words words words...

2008-03-31T11:17:00.004-04:00

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.

2008-03-25T17:23:00.002-04:00

Gender? ...What Gender?

2008-03-22T19:58:00.000-04:00

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.

2008-03-13T09:45:00.002-04:00

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)

2008-03-11T10:56:00.000-04:00

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.

[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.

2008-03-10T10:22:00.000-04:00

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..

2008-03-04T10:12:00.002-04:00

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)

On not being in montreal.

2008-02-29T11:02:00.003-04:00

So, the bad news is i won't be back in montreal at the end of march.
The good news is i´ll still be here.
I'm working until early may, taking two weeks to travel, and returning on probably the 18th of may. Debriefing on the 20th - 23rd.
I'm really glad to have another couple months to work on my spanish.

The other bad news, minus silver lining, is that i won't be going to school in montreal in the fall.
This is crushing to me, montreal is like a home and a mother to me.
But i feel like i've grown up there, and to live in the same place you grew up is kind of stagnatative, so it's sort of a good thing that i´ll end up in ottawa (hopefully) or halifax for a few years.
It'll help me grow as a person and all that kind of stuff.

Anyway, it's only two hours from Ottawa to Montreal.
I can see Montreal on the weekends. Ottawa doesn't need to know.

There's a lot of good music in Bolivia, but none of it makes it into my office.

2008-02-27T11:56:00.000-04:00

every day i listen to love ballads, south america's answer to the love child of nickelback and 80s soft rock, artless piano (fake piano) melodies with a complexity and depth reminiscent of songs i was taught in early elementary school, plodding along at about 60 bpm like a faithful, arthritic dog, replete with those magical sounding wind-chime effects that you hear in every RnB song written after 1990, and before "turn the page" in childrens books on tape, and which will automatically make me hate, instantly and from the depths of my innards, anything that contains them.

the one positive side is if i don't listen to closely i can avoid understanding the lyrics, but this is less and less true every day.

i do want to re-emphasize, though, that traditional music in bolivia is really nice. i wish we'd listen to that.

Still not exactly about Bolivia..

2008-02-14T10:04:00.003-04:00

work's been slow.
i found 43things.com
there, i was enticed into making a list of 100 things that make me happy.
surprisingly satisfying, not as cheesy as you might think.

1. the way light hits everything, esp in the morning and evening
2. walking through puddles
3. anything unexpected
4. hot loose tea in a glass jar
5. Charlie mingus
6. wearing big warm scarves
7. biking
8. biking in winter
9. old pianos
10. marching bands
11. plants, esp growing plants
12. warm friendly cats
13. synthpop
14. rooftops
15. exploring abandoned places
16. being completely alone
17. being surrounded by people who inspire me
18. waterballoons (globos!)
19. curious horses
20. second hand stores
21. loving and feeling loved
22. home-made bread
23. making things up
24. reproducible art
25. the swimming pool behind mcgill
26. swimming, in general
27. getting dirty
28. feeling healthy
29. my grandmother’s house
30. tiny things
31. huge things
32. challenges
33. hoodies
34. high-fives
35. fluorescent and neon things
36. people spontaneously singing together, even better if they don’t know each other
37. seeing people being inspired
38. dancing
39. wearing costumes
40. elaborate plans for simple goals
41. hide and seek
42. capture the flag
43. surprising people
44. smiling at strangers
45. being smiled at by strangers.
46. greasy spoon breakfasts
47. anyone over the age of 70, esp if they’re happy
48. the smell of construction sites
49. earthworms, slugs, snails
50. strange insects
51. watching birds in the mornings
52. ice cream
53. the honesty of little kids
54. old libraries
55. speaking Spanish
56. rumi
57. eating oranges
58. being spooned
59. hanging around in my underwear
60. jumping off of things
61. hand-made things
62. DIY
63. guerrilla art
64. tubas
65. trumpets
66. thick warm long socks
67. sleeping naked
68. my sleeping bag
69. guacamole
70. the smell of laundryrooms and Laundromats
71. dogs wearing sweaters
72. emir kusturica
73. banksy
74. gogol bordello
75. klezmer themed parties
76. almost any other themed party
77. alternative circus
78. slingshot (dayplanner, not weapon)
79. co-operatives
80. cutting my own hair
81. rearranging furniture
82. records
83. the quietness of sunday mornings
84. skateboard adventures
85. working on bikes
86. making things into other, previously unrelated things
87. drawing buildings, preferably old rotten ones
88. taking pictures
89. photoshopping pictures
90. silkscreening!
91. covering up or altering invasive public advertising
92. pot-lucks
93. playing drums
94. playing almost anything else
95. playing, in general
96. reflection (both thinking and mirrors)
97. water
98. cleaning (really!)
99. knitting
100. making lists (also really!)

Bork, Bork, Bork? (noht ebuoot bolivia)

2008-02-12T16:39:00.000-04:00

I was looking through the language options of google today when i noticed, amongst, you know, french and spanish and whatnot, "¡Bork, Bork, Bork!"
curious, i clicked..
http://www.google.com/intl/xx-bork/

and then did a little research to learn that this was in fact a version of google translated into the language of a muppet character.
i was also happy, and relieved (how did i ever live without this...) to discover that there´s a muppet wiki..

http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/The_Swedish_Chef

oh, but it gets better... when i went back into the language ops to get back to english, i noticed there was also an option called "hecker bork-bork-bork" (in bork bork bork, of course.. plain old "hacker" in english) which appears to be written in l33t.

http://www.google.com/intl/xx-hacker/

... just in case searching the internet in plain english wasn't geeky enough.

words words words

2008-02-07T18:22:00.000-04:00

i feel like spanish is inherently more positive than english. it comes out in the different meanings of words..

for example, "to wait" in english has sort of negative connotations..

waiting rooms, waiting in line, waiting on someone, in the sense of serving them.

in spanish, esperar, "to wait", also means "to hope for".

it's got a much more positive feeling.

also, the word for "retirement" is jubilación.. (like, you know, jubilation)

ju bil ation!

(it's a great word, even in english)

Boiling Pits of Gloop! (from summer vacation near Uyuni)

2008-02-01T11:55:00.000-04:00

A genuinely perfect sunday afternoon

2008-01-31T11:29:00.000-04:00

Sunday afternoon the local team’s playing Potosí, the nearest city. Nicolas and I go with one of his co-workers, Adam, to watch.

Adam has given me a vague idea of where the stadium is; Nicolas and I weave through crooked streets in that general direction. We approach a set of stairs, Nicolas says he’s always wondered about them and I convince him we should go up.

At the top we stroll as nonchalantly as possible through the middle of a party: a collection of umbrella tables, possibly from a restaurant or maybe just random, completely blocking the street for any cars. People are listening to music and drinking, and watching us. We emerge from this and realize the entire road ahead of us is soaked and half a dozen kids are staring at us gleefully as they fill balloons and jugs (jugs!) with water. We walk slowly and calmly, as though we were passing though a pack of lions, trying to balance our careful observation of the potential assailants with the tactic of not showing fear. We pass through unharmed. When we get to the end of the block, one kid throws a globo which I dodge, laughing.

But we’re not out of the woods yet. We pass another two or three kids, and the one five year old seems like he really wants to get me, so I hold my coat in front of me and go, “Yeah? Do it. Do it!”.

He throws the globo. I deflect it with my coat. It hits the ground but doesn´t break. While we’re both scrambling for it his sister throws another one nails me in the head. I grab the globo and get him with it. Yes.. I threw a waterballoon at a five year old. If there is any injustice in this (and he started it, so maybe there isn’t) it’s corrected when another kid from the group dumps a jug of water on my back.

Now i´m definitely wet. But it´s sunny and my cell phone and mp3 player seem to be alright, so i´m not that worried.

Outside the stadium is a lineup. We find Adam. We buy globos and lob them at other people with globos. Every thirty seconds or so one flies by somewhere. Somehow we don’t get hit. A middle aged lady squirts us with a watergun that looks like a coke bottle and snickers.

Inside, we sit down and wait. Really young kids, 6 some of them, are selling pop and junk food. The game starts. Riot cops in full gear with shields are on the field. They protect the Potosi team when they come onto the field. They protect the refs from the players after the game. The crowd does it’s best to penetrate the shield and nail them with globos, or anything else that’s expendable. Behind us is a guy listening to the game on the radio. We hear something about a goal. On the field, nothing.

“Is he listening to a different game?”
“… yeah, I think he is?”

There’s a commotion behind us: A Potosi fan has for some reason sat in the Sucre section and is being pelted with globos, garbage, pop bottles.

The ref makes a few bad calls and for the rest of the game globos are constantly landing around her. Someone shoots a firecracker at the Potosi goalie and the game stops while medical checks him out. Apparently he’s fine.

The fact that it rains through the second half of the game doesn’t stop anyone from throwing globos. It’s the thought that counts.

On the way home, we follow a marching band for a while. Kids run out of doorways trying to throw buckets of water on the marching band and the crowd behind it. Some guy offers his drink to Nicolas, it seems to be singani (hard liquor made of grapes, a bit like vodka) mixed with milk, in a re-used 40. I pass on that one.

Eventually we split off and find our way home.

...in which i try to be only a pair of eyes but my brain follows like a loving and persistent pet dog.

2008-01-27T11:15:00.001-04:00

saturday: it's sunny and after a week of rain i appreciate this.

the market, you smell the meat before you see it. piles of sliced beef, flies, dogs waiting below. halves of animals hanging, heads on countertops, intact naked dead chickens, a stack of white legs with pink hooves, sawn off at the knee. pigs? they're huge and a bit translucent

my vegetable lady waves,

she's sitting on a platform, halfway up a mountain of food,

comes down a precarious set of steps that are really just a pile of wooden crates

a kiss on the cheek.

what will you take?

i list unfamiliar names for familiar things. papas, zanahorias, cebollas.

she thows in a green lumpy thing for free,

"it's like zuccinni!

ciao mamasita, ciao-ciao!"

a five year old boy wants to carry my groceries for me, but i don't have much and they fit in my purse.

"lo siento, no necesito"

walking home, i think about the argument that most people on the streets don't really need the money they're asking for.

i think about the relativity of "ability" to work, (doesn't being a single mom with five kids impede your ability to work? doesn't old age, young age, blindness in one eye, inability to speak the dominant language, cultural alienation impede your ability to work? these are the situations of many of the people who ask me for money here)

i wonder how much any of us "need" the money we get, and how slippery the term "work" is.

the mom trying to take care of five kids isn't "working", she's just asking for money.

telemarketers, on the other hand, "work", even if they're just calling people and ripping them off.

which of the two is actually doing something good and useful?

well, i guess that's a different thing than work, whatever it is.

busses pass, the outsides painted like 70s bowling alleys, and where you expect to see a destination or route number you see jesus, or sometimes che. once, chuck norris.

strung along the inside of the windshield: tinsel, pom poms, religious icons.

the door stays open all the time. when you get on the driver takes your money and gives you change with one hand while he drives with the other.

the coins are stacked neatly in a wooden box with rows for each size, hand made.

about half the people on the street are indigenous, small ladies (some of the older ladies don't even come up to my shoulder) in fancy elaborate skirts and shawls, modelled after high society fashion of two centuries ago, with long stockings and classy men's hats. two long thick neat braids, to the waist, with sort of an ornamentation at the bottom to make the bit of unbraided hair look nice.

the sidewalks are covered in exploded balloons. a piece of yellow rubber falls off the wall beside me as i walk past and flutters downwards.

a waterballoon explodes on a wall between me and a girl walking ahead of me and we jump.

"de donde...?" (how do i say "it came from?"... who knows)

"creo alla".. (over there)

a marching band thumps and jubilates nearby. every weekend. the birds in our garden compete with the trumpets. petares, small fireworks, go off somewhere. every weekend.

i pass the marching band, it's more like a roaming pack of kids, my age or younger. no uniforms. one guy has stopped playing to talk on his cell phone. a party is following them around, kids in the front doing elaborate footwork as they dance ahead, reminding me of movies like hair and grease. kids behind jumping up and down like they're in a mosh pit, yelling and carrying alcohol in pop bottles which they pour into the glasses they drink out of. everyone's ecstatic. the band doesn't seem to have any kind of itinerary, it just weaves through the city. traffic doesn't seem to mind. this is a normal occurrence.

Overall, though.. (sv part 7)

2008-01-25T11:00:00.000-04:00

Overall, though,

Being out in the country for a few days, seeing smaller towns where people live really simply, reminded me how excessive north americans are.

I'm not just talking about hummers. I'm talking about how many outfits of clothing we think we need, how often we think we need to shower, all the unneccesary stuff that's manufactured for us like hair gel, make-up, and fragrances... how disturbingly big our houses apparently have to be, how much energy we waste on things like washing machines (and especially dryers), dishwashers, ohhhh and xmas lights... all the useless and unsustainable things we do like growing grass where we could grow food, etc etc etc. The list is almost infinite.

In general, this trip reminded me how many ways there are of doing things, and that the way we do things, contrary to popular opinion, may not be the best ways. In many cases, the way that i saw things being done might not have been the best ways either.

Basically we've all got a lot to learn from each other and for that we all need to work on our sense of humility and open mindedness.

On the other hand... (summer vacation part 6)

2008-01-22T10:46:00.001-04:00

On the other hand...

I do have to pull a spoiled north american act and complain briefly about toilets.
In the last week or so i've used toilets that didn't have seats, didn't have toilet paper (they never do.. don't even expect there to be any.. you always bring your own), didn't have soap, (you're lucky if they do) didn't have towels (almost never) didn't have hot water (even the one in my house doesn't), and sometimes didn't have running water at all. (get a bucket, bail water from the water barrel into the tank, then flush). oh, and as i've said before, the toilet paper, used, goes into a garbage can. not as disgusting as you might imagine, but sometimes pretty disgusting.
oh, and busses don't have toilets.
so i've also had to pee in the middle of the desert, where everything is flat and there are no bushes or trees to hide behind.
in the end you just walk really far and hide behind a large tuft of grass.
this is a functional toilet in a hostel we stayed at at laguna colorado:

the other stall was a little nicer, with amenities like a toilet seat.
that didn't help the fact that your feet stuck a little to the floor, though.
and this is the inside of the door to the stall:

and after touching that, you get to the sink, which has no running water, and no soap, and realize that if you're going to wash your hands it's going to be with your own bottled water and that if you didn't bring soap you're not getting any.
mmmmm.
i think i preferred peeing behind a tuft of grass.

oh, and i've also seen kids peeing on sidewalks, and, in potosi, a lady squatting over a drain in the gutter, carefully keeping her skirts off the ground. I was more impressed than anything else.

Summer Vacation part 5:

2008-01-18T09:31:00.000-04:00

On a related note to part 4:
Cultural relativism, attitude, humility.

There are lots of things that we do a certain way, on the assumption that our way is the proper way of doing those things.
On the bus ride from Potosi to Uyuni, the bus was packed. All the seats were full. Kids were sitting on parents' laps. People were standing in the aisles. People were riding in the cabin with the driver. Nicolas, who i was travelling with, was kind of uncomfortable. His reaction was pretty natural, because based on his experience of Canadian busses, he didn't expect to have anyone standing beside him, looming over him, leaning against him on the sharper corners.
It takes a sense of humility to deal with things like this. You have to remember that this may not be appropriate to you, but it is appropriate in Bolivia, and guess what? You're in Bolivia!

And of course, these things work both ways. While we felt sort of crushed on the way to Uyuni, on the way home from Potosi we wouldn't have been allowed on the bus at all if we'd been in Canada. The seats were all full, so they put us in the front of the bus with the driver, which is about the size of a large bathroom and partitioned off from the passengers. Actually, it wasn't just Nicolas and I who were in the cabin. At one point, including the driver, there were NINE of us. A tenth guy tried to jump in while we stopped, but the driver decided nine was enough and closed the door on him.

Of course, there are limits to cultural relativism, like avoiding food that looks really unsanitary, even if it seems to be acceptable by local standards. And there's rights and equality issues, which prettymuch every culture needs to work on in one place or another.
But for the most part, whenever you want to think something's not being done "properly", you may need to check your ethnocentrism and think again.

This isn't just a question of being respectful of the culture you're living in.. it's also a question of expanding your understanding of things and growing as a person.

Maybe, for example, the north american obsession with personal space bubbles is kind of egotistical and selfish.
And while cleanliness is important, maybe north americans take it to a degree that is a bit on the excessive side.

People in Bolivia, in general, are really friendly. (summer vacation #4)

2008-01-16T11:29:00.000-04:00

For the most part you can ask anyone anything you don't know and they'll try and help you figure it out. People tend to be curious about us, ask where we're from, what we're doing here, what we think of it all, etc.

Occasionally though, people are kind of stand-offish and cold.
On one hand, we're invading their space and so i'm willing to have a little humility about it.
But on the other hand, we're really careful to be respectful of how Bolivians do things, and peoples' attitudes towards us are occasionally sort of demeaning or antagonistic in situations where we probably haven't done much to deserve it.
Not the end of the world, but still a really alienating experience.

This made me think a lot about the way i've seen people in medicine hat, alberta,(and many other places in canada) act really standoffish towards mexicans, or south/central americans, or africans. Or, of course, first nations people. There's this cliquishness and sense of implicit superiority that i find really juvenile and disgusting. And i think Canadians do this a lot more than Bolivians do. I hope we can eventually grow up a little bit and learn to appreciate each other.

Bolivia = Mars (summer vacation part 3!)

2008-01-15T15:33:00.000-04:00

To the left is one picture of Bolivia, and one picture of Mars. You can all have the fun and excitement of guessing which is which.

Actually, most of bolivia is pretty green.
But for about a day, south of Uyuni, we drove through dirt, dirt, rocks, dirt and dirt. This could have been because it was really dry and also over 5000 m above sea level in some places.

Summer Vacation Part 2!

2008-01-10T16:33:00.000-04:00

Summer Vacation Part 2!
some observations from this trip:

First, a reminder: Bolivia is the poorest country in south america.
You don't get that impression when you're in city centres, but if you're not convinced just take a look at how people live in the edges of the cities and in the country. Mud or clay brick houses, usually with roofs and doors, or sometimes not. Both of the places we stayed during our three day tour south of Uyuni were not connected to a power grid.

Check the "countryside in Bolivia" photo album for pictures.

The hostel at the first place we stayed (San Juan) had a generator, so there was about two hours worth of electricity. At night, the whole town was pitch black. Some of the kids with us went out in the evening and had to feel their way home.
The second place we stayed, at the Laguna Colorado (the red lake), to my delight, had solar panels.
Way to skip all the dirty electricity and move straight to the sustainable stuff!
Of course, the solar panels are probably there because they were cheaper than installing hundreds of kilometers of wire, not because of a deep and personal concern for the environment. Still, I’ll take that.
On the other hand, while the second place we stayed did have more than two hours per day of electricity, it didn't have running water.

Summer Vacation: Part 1

2008-01-09T17:26:00.000-04:00

(because yes, it is summer down here...)

Over the xmas break I got the chance to travel a little. Now i´m finally getting the chance to write about it.

first stop: Potosi; the highest city in the world, 4060 m above sea level.
[it should be noted that while potosi is the highest *city*, Wenzhuan, the highest *town*, is over a kilometer 1000 m higher. i'm sure the tourism department in potosi has nightmares about population explosions in Wenzhuan....]
The altitude slowed us down a little... we were a little more out of breath than usual and were really appreciative of mate de coca (coca leaf tea, which helps with the altitude), but we didn't have any serious problems.
potosi is a mining town.. we didn't get the chance to tour the mines because it was xmas.. instead we celebrated xmas with about a dozen other people from our hostel. we had dinner, drank wine, and watched music videos from the 80s.
(If you ever miss the 80s, just come to bolivia.)
Before going on to Uyuni, Nicolas and I did get the chance to climb up into the bell tower of a church and take pictures.

(check the potosi and uyuni galleries for photos)

then, Uyuni:
what's in Uyuni? not a lot. but what did we see on a three day tour south of uyuni?

salt desert. salt, piles of salt, hotels made of salt, salt carvings. an island with giant cacti and a cave. surrounded by salt. dirt, rocks, dirt, dirt dirt. coloured lakes, flamingos. volcanoes, geysers, hot springs, boiling glooping pits of something steamy and muddy looking. train cemetery.

(all, or almost all, in the galleries)
Coming up: Summer Vacation Parts 2, 3, 4, etc: a series of posts with my overall impressions of the trip.
(more interesting, i hope, than a checklist-like list of things i saw)

about time

2007-12-18T11:20:00.000-04:00

a short note: in my entire time in bolivia, i have not seen a functional clock.
our hotel room didn´t have one. our house doesn´t have one.
the wall clocks in my workplace, all the workplaces of my friends that i´ve seen, every classroom i've been in at my spanish school, and anywhere else that i can´t specifically remember, have been dead.
clocks on computers in internet cafes are always wrong.
needless to say, this isn´t the kind of place where people are perfectly on time.
however, it's not as bad the clocklessness might lead you to assume.

Culture shock?

2007-12-17T09:57:00.000-04:00

Being a vegetarian in bolivia has been a lot easier than i expected. things like quinoa and avocados and lentils are everywhere. there are not one but two vegetarian restaurants within a block of my house. like in north america, most restaurants have at least a couple of vegetarian options.
Ironically, the times when it's hardest to avoid meat are when my co-volunteers choose the restaurant.
This ties into something that's generally surprised me about the other volunteers i'm working with, as well as people in some of the organizations we're working for: to use a clichee, i assumed we were all here with the intention of making the world a better place. and by extension, i assumed we would all have a sense of awareness of the consequences of our actions, and have a similar sense of ethics.
But really? no, not really. no one really seems to care about animal rights. i met a girl in montreal who had worked in the same program and she joyfully showed us a blanket (and matching pillows) she'd brought back which was made entirely of fur. no one seems to mind eating meat. we eat at a vegetarian restaurant near here pretty often, but for everyone else it seems to be out of convenience, pure proximity to the house. while i'm enjoying what i consider to be the luxury of fried tofu and quinoa, other people are talking offhandedly about how unfulfilling vegetarian food is and how they don't mind it once a day but "have to" eat meat at some point.
As someone who has said and done the exact same things in the past and is now surviving nicely without meat, i can't help but see the things they're doing and saying as a bit naive, contrived, and as an attempt to justify doing something which, when you think about it, is not that ethical.
But beyond that: in two weeks of talking to my co-volunteers, i'm surprised at how little some of them seem to care that the clothing and shoes they're buying for extra cheap here were, whether they're a good deal or not, made in sweatshops.
I'm surprised, and disgusted, that everyone except me smokes.
I'm shocked to discover that there are people who are here to volunteer in a country which is living proof of the beauty and diversity of indigenous culture, and its ability to exist alongside of other cultures, who think that the problem with first nations people in canada is that they're allowed to live together, as opposed to assimilating.
I see people who seem to appreciate the culture here as if it was a show, or entertainment, without seeming to have a sense of genuine respect for it.
I'm depressed by some peoples' total oblivion to the idea of conserving resources, and doing things sustainably.
To be clear though, all of the people i´m with here are really good people. Some are really amazing. and i have to say as well that there's lots of things i could improve on myself, and in a way i appreciate being in an environment that forces me to think very carefully about my values and why i've adopted them. And this has made me really appreciate the kids i spend time with in Montreal (and other places) who do actually care about these kinds of things. You guys are precious.
So ironically, if i'm experiencing any culture shock in bolivia, it's not because of bolivian culture, but the culture and values of my fellow quebecois and canadians.

photos online..

2007-12-15T14:14:00.000-04:00

i've got two albums on picassa now....
http://picasaweb.google.es/turnoffyourcomputer
the photos in the slideshows here come from there.
there's a permanent link above the slideshows.
more coming soon.

...when i saw the electric cross i was secretly pleased.

2007-12-12T09:30:00.000-04:00

It took a few days to notice it, but i was walking home one evening and there it was, on the hill ahead of me:
A huge, bright white lit-up cross.

I've always found the one in montreal sort of weird, (it's a religous symbol, looming over you, everywhere. it's made of cold hard steel and glowing white filaments. it's surrounded by an evil looking iron fence with sharp points curved outwards towards potential interlopers. it doesn't really seem to embody the ideals that christianity claims to stand behind.)

So, when i saw that Sucre also had a giant electric cross, i wasn´t that surprised. It is a catholic country. Maybe there's a factory somewhere that mass produces them. And secretly, i was sort of happy. It does, afterall, remind me of home.

(oh, and pictures coming soon, really.)

Sucre

2007-12-08T10:01:00.000-04:00

sucre!
it´s a lot quieter here than la paz.
but still tons of pollution.

i´m in an apartment. the older parts of the city are really spanish feeling. (logically, having been built by the spanish)
the buildings are built right up to the sidewalk, the walls are whitewashed (but covered in political graffiti.. no one writes their own name in graffiti, everyone writes evo's) but the interior of each block is a really nice courtyard or series of courtyards.
so if you walk through my front door (old, dark wood, double doors, arched at the top, heavy, reminiscient of castles and fortresses) you come into a courtyard, paved in stones, with a fountain, non-functional. this is pretty standard.
stone stairs going up to the second floor, or an arched walkway under the second floor through to the second courtyard: grassy, a tree, rose bushes, a basin carved out of rock for washing clothes.
the second floor is a series of rooms (bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen, dining room) connected by a long balcony. no interior hallways.
the view from the balcony is of part of the city, a few hills in the distance, it´s nice, and it´s being slowly blocked by the construction of some new building.
ahhhh, development.
the stove is attached to a propane tank a la barbecue. there´s no sink in the kitchen. there´s no hot water anywhere, in sucre, in general.
the shower has a large showerhead which heats the water in a similar way to those electric kettles everyone has these days. the tap for the shower is well-wrapped in electrical tape, because apparently before that was done people were getting really good shocks from touching it.

i went to the mercado campesino (farmer's market?) with my roommate feyla, and at one point she was like,
"whoa, look at that!"
and i was like, "whoa yeah, handspun alpaca wool!"
"no,beside the wool!"
"... oh, dried llama fetuses, yeah!"
i don't know how i saw the wool without seeing the dried llama fetuses but this must say something about me.

i opened a bank account here,
lots of military dudes with knee to thigh high guns at the bank.
when we were leaving the bank we realized they still had a paper we needed, and the guy who had helped us wasn´t at his desk.
so jean alex, our coordinator, just grabbed the paper off his desk, and there wasn´t any problem at all, despite how securitized the bank appears to be.

i can´t even begin to explain how amazing buying groceries is here.
if you want, there´s a supermarket, like in north america, (boooooo)
or, there´s this giant open air market full of indigenous women who are really specialized. cheese, avocadoes, mangoes, or sometimes they´ll have a big pile of various vegetables or spices.
it´s so big and mazelike and crowded, it´s insane.
you can taste stuff before you buy it.
so if you even make eye contact with a cheese seller she´ll have a slice balanced on a knife blade for you to taste before you can blink.
you can also taste spices. this is useful, but sometimes unpleasant.
you can barter, but for the most part things are already ridiculously cheap.
with small artisans and farmers i don´t really barter.
with people who are just acting as middlemen and selling stuff they bought somewhere, i do.

spanish is coming along.
i can kinda speak, usually.
like a hack, though.
i forgot what it´s like to not know how to say things like, "i would like".
i spend a lot of time walking into places and just naming things.
or at best asking, probably improperly, how much they are.

In la Paz!

2007-12-04T09:48:00.000-04:00

i´m in bolivia, and everything´s good (i didn´t get altitude sickness, which is unusual, although my stomach seems to like liquifying things lately, so my luck has balanced out) (oh, and feeling a little off for the first while in a developing country is pretty normal, ie not cause for concern)

where i´m actually at:
la paz.
i may go to sucre soon.
that depends on whether or not the city returns from its present state of anarchy.
(to clarify, if things don´t calm down, oxfam will probably find something for me to do in la paz).
i may have a cell phone soon. or possibly not. i´m not sure yet.
i may eventually have an address. between now and sunday i´m living at a hotel.

how to reach me:
email is wise.
if any of you want to try and call me, you might be able to get me at the hotel..
the number, from canada, is 011-591-2-2363355, or 011-591-2-2313775
i´m in room number 505.
i´m not sure if the hotel staff speak english. they might.
if you´re gonna do that, it´d be a very good idea to get a calling card with good rates for bolivia.
you could definitely also just email me, and ask me to call you. it´s not that expensive from here.

postcards:
if you want one, send me your address...

la paz:
is crazy. there are dogs everywhere. this morning there was a small protest for the rights of dogs.
you can´t drink the water (which also means you can´t eat raw fruit unless you peel it), and you can´t put toilet paper in the toilet. suddenly that little garbage can in the bathroom becomes much more useful.
traffic is insane, taxis are cheap, busses are even cheaper (equivaled of 25 cents a ride)
and the busses are way better, just because they´re old school bus-looking things with crazy 70s racing stripes on them.
there are also smaller private busses, which are recognisable by a guy, or girl, hanging out the window and screaming the names of various places the bus is going to.
who needs a sign, when you can just yell.
crossing the street is an art form. montrealers would be much better prepared for this than people from other cities in canada.

i´ll get pictures up on some kind of a blog eventually. right now i can´t use my laptop because of the altitude.
that´s right.. la paz is so high that my computer is not designed to operate here.
oh, and another interesting thing: the highest part of la paz (the altiplano) is a full KILOMETRE higher than the lowest parts.
3000ish m above sea level vs over 4060, i think.
it looks like someone put a city on and around the world´s largest open pit mine.