An Illustrated Guide to Bird-Calls

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!

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)

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!

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!")

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...

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

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...

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...

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!

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)

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

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)

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...

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

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

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

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

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

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

malt plant, how i miss you.

Gender? ...What Gender?

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

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

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

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

Maybe i'll start saying i'm cansadoa?

I am pursuing something almost invisible to human observation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Democracy and Social Change in Bolivia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

cochabamba may be my favourite place in bolivia so far.

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

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

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

About those photos: Tubing and Waterfalls..

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

On not being in montreal.

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.

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..

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)

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

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)

A genuinely perfect sunday afternoon

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.

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)

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)

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.