Okay, I’ll admit it, my social life is a little lacking at the moment. A fun filled Saturday night involves me dancing in my room, sometimes by myself, sometimes with a few Bolivian kids that live in my house or near it. Okay, let’s face it, that’s pretty much every night, I have brought the dance party to Bolivia and I feel good about it. You see Bolivians have a unique way of dancing. They do the old school, traditional paired dances with certain passes and movements assigned to the male and female dancers. They are not complicated dances because, well, despite my belief that all Latin American blooded people were born with an innate sense of rhythm, it turns out that Bolivians are missing this crucial gene. The idea of free form dance is really unheard of here, as is Justin Timberlake. It’s the Cueca and Chacarera and countless other two step numbers, which I enjoy because they’re easy to learn and anyone can do them. Thank god for my I-pod and Shakira (they know who Shakira is here, but I don’t think anyone in my town has seen an I-pod before so I tell them it’s a kind of radio.) I’ve done every dance move I can think of from the twist to the Macarena and they eat it all up. I’m thinking of starting up some kind of weekend dance/exercise/self esteem class for the girls, we could meet in the health post and dance like lunatics. I don’t mind looking ridiculous every chance I get, I love to make these kids laugh.
I had the chance to visit my fellow SoTa volunteer Natalie in her site the other week. (That’s Southern Tarija, yes we gave NYC style neighborhood names to the regions of Tarija, the other volunteers are in NoTa of course, Northern Tarija. B-jo is what we call the city of Bermejo.) The town was having a big anniversary celebration and May 1st was labor day here and they have a big to do about the Chicago union activists who fought for the 8 hour work day. I was real confused because here were Bolivians telling us the history of labor day and it’s US history that I was definitely hazy on. And our labor day is in September anyway and then we’re just selling TVs and back to school supplies so I don’t know. Anyway, the point is we went to this festival where there were a ton of musical groups and traditional dances and food. It “started” at 6pm but bands didn’t start playing until 8 or 9pm. It was absolutely freezing as it has been for the last few weeks, the cold front has definitely moved in from Argentina and it’s not going anywhere. So for hours the Bolivian audience is just sitting there. Clapping politely and what not but no one is dancing. I couldn’t believe it, it was freezing so you would think they would want to move around a bit, but no, they sat there like frozen icicles. I lied down in the grass for a bit with a couple of kids using me as a pillow, I seem to be a comfortable resting spot for many Bolivian children. Natalie, Elliot and I wandered around with nothing to do but eat all night. We had these crepe pancakes and soy milk ladled from a big bucket and some egg sandwiches at about 4 in the morning. Elliot and I also got a drink we thought was going to be wine and soda but turned out to be hot white wine. As if cheap box wine isn’t bad enough, they decided to heat it up. It was nasty but I was cold so I drank it anyway.
The festival lasted all night and into the wee hours of the morning. I just wanted to go to Natalie’s and go to bed but we kept thinking this must be the last band and then we’ll go, but there was always another band. We were huddled around one of the cooking fires when the last band came on around 4:30am. This is when the Bolivians decided they wanted to dance. I guess they had drank enough puro (rubbing alcohol mixed with hot water or soda or some other thing, no joke, rubbing alcohol isn’t poisoned here so people can drink it.) As I stared in amazement at their hypnotically simple movements Natalie’s family finally came over to tell us they were leaving after this song. It was around 5 when we headed back down the highway to Natalie’s house. Yeah, her town is right off the highway, and she is terrified that she will get hit by a bus or truck, especially when trying to ride a bike in the 3 inch shoulder. It makes me very grateful to be out in the sticks.
Incidentally, I found out about this festival from Elliot who had a message delivered to me by a passenger who was on the trufi heading to my town. I was having warm milk with sugar and bread over at Doña Santusa’s that day when we had planted the onions and this lady comes to the door asking for me, I’m not hard to find in this town, obviously. She did the Bolivian hand motion to come, which is the same motion we use to mean go away (I still can’t associate someone with their wrist down waving their hand at me to mean “come here” and not “go away.”) The note was addressed to Mitchelle, la gringa de cuerpo de paz. This is a totally valid way of sending messages to other volunteers. If I wanted to get a message to Elliot and his phone was down or something I can simply go to his taxi stop in B-jo and have one of the drivers give him a note when he goes by his site, they all know who he is and where he lives. It’s just how it is. When I went to visit Aaron I had no idea where he lived, I just asked the first person I saw and she told me. You know the Cheers theme song, “you want to go where everybody knows your name,” well if that’s the case don’t go to some dive bar, come to Bolivia. One interesting trait that Bolivians have is that they have to say your name when they see you because they are acknowledging your presence and it would be rude to not say your name. So everywhere I go it’s a chorus of “Michelle, Michelle, Michelle” or more like Misha, Misha, Misha.
The next day was the big Agricultural festival in Natalie’s site featuring products from her women’s group. It was slated to start at 9am, which was incredible considering the previous night’s activities had barely ended. The women had made some marmalades and even peanut butter which they had stopped making because peanut prices went insanely high. There were all sorts of delicious goodies and we snacked all day long and hung out with Peter and his family who had come down that day. Natalie had a lot of work in her first weeks, getting ready for the festival, which is a project that the previous volunteer started. I finally met with my women’s group and they have some festivals coming up in July and August as well so hopefully we can get started on some marmalades. There is a beautiful building that was being built for the women’s center, but it has no roof, windows or doors and the work has stopped. So we have to write up some kind of project proposal and meet with the mayor to get them to finish it. It would be a great product transformation center for them when it’s done. I have grand visions of ecological ovens and solar panels for electricity. My APCD (aka boss) Pepe came down to check things out and is going to send me a whole bunch of seeds for the women’s garden. There is also an NGO working with the women here and it seems like another great opportunity for collaboration since they share a lot of the goals of the PC AG project.
Back in my part of SoTa we had a little festival called Fiesta de La Cruz. This involved carrying a big cross made of flowers from one part of town to another. They lit candles around the cross and drank a whole bunch of chicha. It also involved a rather, um, interesting game that was like a cross between pin the tail on the donkey and whack-a-mole. So you have a guy and you blindfold him, spin him around and give him a stick. Then he has to go and find this chicken head and give it a whack dead on. At first when the 14 year old that lives in my house whose name is Leidy (pronounced just like lady) explained it to me and pointed out the chicken head I assumed that it was just a dead chicken’s severed head, and well that’s gross but whatever, TIB. Then when the contestant almost hit the chicken head and it moved I got closer to get a better look and discovered that it was indeed a live chicken that was buried in a hole in the ground with just it’s head sticking up through the hole (like when you bury someone in the sand at the beach…and then take a stick and try to hit him on the head.) So yeah, this is what passes for fun in my town. Live whack-a-chicken. Being a vegetarian and feeling naturally inclined against cruelty to animals I was pretty horrified but wasn’t sure how to react. I mean, you can’t really expect people who are treated like they are nothing to treat animals like they are something. It’s evident from the way dogs are treated that even animals that are valued for companionship and protection aren’t worth humane treatment. You get kicked around all day and when you come home you kick the dog to make yourself feel better. That’s how it is here and I’m not here to start an animal rights 
movement, I’m here to help people not get kicked around so much, to improve their economic and social situation so maybe eventually they won’t need to kick the dog. That’s a lot of wishful thinking on my part but what can I do? When someone finally did manage to bop the chicken on the head they poured some chicha on it’s head and that seemed to be the end of the game and the festival. I don’t know what the fate of the chicken was, maybe the guy who hit it won it as a prize or something, I mean, it’s going to get killed and eaten eventually, I know that, but still…hit the chicken on the head with a stick, this is the best you can come up with?
So now I have assigned myself to be an ambassador of fun here. I’m racking my brain and the internet for every children’s game and song I ever knew. Pato, pato, ganso, a.k.a. duck, duck, goose is already a big hit as is pretty much anything I introduce to kids here just because it’s something to do that’s new and different. So if you were a camp counselor or just remember a lot of fun childhood activities that are easy to translate into Spanish and teach to Bolivians please help me out. Oh, that reminds me, there was this game they played at the AG festival where you throw this half metal, half bone object into a pile of mud and if it lands a certain way you get a point but if it lands another way your opponent gets a point. Seriously, they have the worst games here. Is that too culturally insensitive to say? I mean, I’m not trying to say that horseshoes or pin the tail on the donkey are cultural gems or anything, they probably evolved out of throw the bone in the mud and whack-a-chicken so whatever. The point is that my idea of fun and the Bolivian idea of fun are very much at odds at the moment and I’m trying to do my best to rectify this. Thus the nightly dance parties and trying to reconnect with the simple fun from my childhood. I think I can get a town wide game of Manhunt organized. But how to translate Olly, olly ox in free…?
I had the chance to visit my fellow SoTa volunteer Natalie in her site the other week. (That’s Southern Tarija, yes we gave NYC style neighborhood names to the regions of Tarija, the other volunteers are in NoTa of course, Northern Tarija. B-jo is what we call the city of Bermejo.) The town was having a big anniversary celebration and May 1st was labor day here and they have a big to do about the Chicago union activists who fought for the 8 hour work day. I was real confused because here were Bolivians telling us the history of labor day and it’s US history that I was definitely hazy on. And our labor day is in September anyway and then we’re just selling TVs and back to school supplies so I don’t know. Anyway, the point is we went to this festival where there were a ton of musical groups and traditional dances and food. It “started” at 6pm but bands didn’t start playing until 8 or 9pm. It was absolutely freezing as it has been for the last few weeks, the cold front has definitely moved in from Argentina and it’s not going anywhere. So for hours the Bolivian audience is just sitting there. Clapping politely and what not but no one is dancing. I couldn’t believe it, it was freezing so you would think they would want to move around a bit, but no, they sat there like frozen icicles. I lied down in the grass for a bit with a couple of kids using me as a pillow, I seem to be a comfortable resting spot for many Bolivian children. Natalie, Elliot and I wandered around with nothing to do but eat all night. We had these crepe pancakes and soy milk ladled from a big bucket and some egg sandwiches at about 4 in the morning. Elliot and I also got a drink we thought was going to be wine and soda but turned out to be hot white wine. As if cheap box wine isn’t bad enough, they decided to heat it up. It was nasty but I was cold so I drank it anyway.
The festival lasted all night and into the wee hours of the morning. I just wanted to go to Natalie’s and go to bed but we kept thinking this must be the last band and then we’ll go, but there was always another band. We were huddled around one of the cooking fires when the last band came on around 4:30am. This is when the Bolivians decided they wanted to dance. I guess they had drank enough puro (rubbing alcohol mixed with hot water or soda or some other thing, no joke, rubbing alcohol isn’t poisoned here so people can drink it.) As I stared in amazement at their hypnotically simple movements Natalie’s family finally came over to tell us they were leaving after this song. It was around 5 when we headed back down the highway to Natalie’s house. Yeah, her town is right off the highway, and she is terrified that she will get hit by a bus or truck, especially when trying to ride a bike in the 3 inch shoulder. It makes me very grateful to be out in the sticks.
Incidentally, I found out about this festival from Elliot who had a message delivered to me by a passenger who was on the trufi heading to my town. I was having warm milk with sugar and bread over at Doña Santusa’s that day when we had planted the onions and this lady comes to the door asking for me, I’m not hard to find in this town, obviously. She did the Bolivian hand motion to come, which is the same motion we use to mean go away (I still can’t associate someone with their wrist down waving their hand at me to mean “come here” and not “go away.”) The note was addressed to Mitchelle, la gringa de cuerpo de paz. This is a totally valid way of sending messages to other volunteers. If I wanted to get a message to Elliot and his phone was down or something I can simply go to his taxi stop in B-jo and have one of the drivers give him a note when he goes by his site, they all know who he is and where he lives. It’s just how it is. When I went to visit Aaron I had no idea where he lived, I just asked the first person I saw and she told me. You know the Cheers theme song, “you want to go where everybody knows your name,” well if that’s the case don’t go to some dive bar, come to Bolivia. One interesting trait that Bolivians have is that they have to say your name when they see you because they are acknowledging your presence and it would be rude to not say your name. So everywhere I go it’s a chorus of “Michelle, Michelle, Michelle” or more like Misha, Misha, Misha.
The next day was the big Agricultural festival in Natalie’s site featuring products from her women’s group. It was slated to start at 9am, which was incredible considering the previous night’s activities had barely ended. The women had made some marmalades and even peanut butter which they had stopped making because peanut prices went insanely high. There were all sorts of delicious goodies and we snacked all day long and hung out with Peter and his family who had come down that day. Natalie had a lot of work in her first weeks, getting ready for the festival, which is a project that the previous volunteer started. I finally met with my women’s group and they have some festivals coming up in July and August as well so hopefully we can get started on some marmalades. There is a beautiful building that was being built for the women’s center, but it has no roof, windows or doors and the work has stopped. So we have to write up some kind of project proposal and meet with the mayor to get them to finish it. It would be a great product transformation center for them when it’s done. I have grand visions of ecological ovens and solar panels for electricity. My APCD (aka boss) Pepe came down to check things out and is going to send me a whole bunch of seeds for the women’s garden. There is also an NGO working with the women here and it seems like another great opportunity for collaboration since they share a lot of the goals of the PC AG project.
Back in my part of SoTa we had a little festival called Fiesta de La Cruz. This involved carrying a big cross made of flowers from one part of town to another. They lit candles around the cross and drank a whole bunch of chicha. It also involved a rather, um, interesting game that was like a cross between pin the tail on the donkey and whack-a-mole. So you have a guy and you blindfold him, spin him around and give him a stick. Then he has to go and find this chicken head and give it a whack dead on. At first when the 14 year old that lives in my house whose name is Leidy (pronounced just like lady) explained it to me and pointed out the chicken head I assumed that it was just a dead chicken’s severed head, and well that’s gross but whatever, TIB. Then when the contestant almost hit the chicken head and it moved I got closer to get a better look and discovered that it was indeed a live chicken that was buried in a hole in the ground with just it’s head sticking up through the hole (like when you bury someone in the sand at the beach…and then take a stick and try to hit him on the head.) So yeah, this is what passes for fun in my town. Live whack-a-chicken. Being a vegetarian and feeling naturally inclined against cruelty to animals I was pretty horrified but wasn’t sure how to react. I mean, you can’t really expect people who are treated like they are nothing to treat animals like they are something. It’s evident from the way dogs are treated that even animals that are valued for companionship and protection aren’t worth humane treatment. You get kicked around all day and when you come home you kick the dog to make yourself feel better. That’s how it is here and I’m not here to start an animal rights 
movement, I’m here to help people not get kicked around so much, to improve their economic and social situation so maybe eventually they won’t need to kick the dog. That’s a lot of wishful thinking on my part but what can I do? When someone finally did manage to bop the chicken on the head they poured some chicha on it’s head and that seemed to be the end of the game and the festival. I don’t know what the fate of the chicken was, maybe the guy who hit it won it as a prize or something, I mean, it’s going to get killed and eaten eventually, I know that, but still…hit the chicken on the head with a stick, this is the best you can come up with?So now I have assigned myself to be an ambassador of fun here. I’m racking my brain and the internet for every children’s game and song I ever knew. Pato, pato, ganso, a.k.a. duck, duck, goose is already a big hit as is pretty much anything I introduce to kids here just because it’s something to do that’s new and different. So if you were a camp counselor or just remember a lot of fun childhood activities that are easy to translate into Spanish and teach to Bolivians please help me out. Oh, that reminds me, there was this game they played at the AG festival where you throw this half metal, half bone object into a pile of mud and if it lands a certain way you get a point but if it lands another way your opponent gets a point. Seriously, they have the worst games here. Is that too culturally insensitive to say? I mean, I’m not trying to say that horseshoes or pin the tail on the donkey are cultural gems or anything, they probably evolved out of throw the bone in the mud and whack-a-chicken so whatever. The point is that my idea of fun and the Bolivian idea of fun are very much at odds at the moment and I’m trying to do my best to rectify this. Thus the nightly dance parties and trying to reconnect with the simple fun from my childhood. I think I can get a town wide game of Manhunt organized. But how to translate Olly, olly ox in free…?
