Carny magic?

I went to a workshop a couple of weeks ago and one of the things talked about was the law of attraction. I know we were talking about positive energy vs. negative energy, but I do wonder about certain situations. Such as the lrani-Cochabambino fellow who insists that my destiny is to be his second wife (as in, in addition to the first one). *sigh* He owns a restaurant in town and pretty much asked me to marry him after the first time I visited the delightful Middle-Eastern locale. I may have done something to make him think that his advances were welcome, such as smiling or laughing at this early query (as well as asking what his wife would think). Over the course of the last two+ years, I've hired the husband-and-wife team to cater a few events for my organization because the food is quite fabulous and so NOT Bolivian, which is a happy change every blue moon. I have had the opportunity to hear his fascinating story about how he ended up in Cochabamba (of all places). I do think he is an attractive, charismatic, middle-aged man - but I am not about to run off with him. When he started asking me out on dates, I politely told him it was an inappropriate request (in my culture) and I stopped going to his restaurant, thinking that would be the end of it. Today I happened upon him in the market, and I quickly whispered to my friend Grace that she had to make up an excuse for us to leave if he said anything untoward. After greeting each other and exchanging mundane pleasantries, he asked me how my parents were doing. (A reasonable question.) Then he asked when my parents were going to visit because he wanted to talk to them. (Could have been hinting at the whole marriage thing.) After that, he said he would just have to go to the States to talk to them in person about me. (More obvious.) It was at that point that Grace pointed at her watch and stated that is was time to go. After we had walked a block or so she said he was verde (which I think roughly translates to either 'fresh' or 'dirty man') and that I was way too nice to him. I forgot to ask her how she thought I should treat him . . . anyway, this post is part of my continuing reflection about one of the messages in the workshop. What kind of energy am I putting out there? and Could it just be my Grandma Bonnie's "carny" gene being passed on to me?

My camera is telling me something

One happy me! Love the mountains and the crisp air.

Early in July, I was in La Paz for a week long meeting. Since the city has a lot more technical services than Cochabamba, I decided to take my 'new' camera in for servicing. My older camera was a donation from one of my besties in Wisconsin, but it only takes blurry pictures now. (Seriously, the camera, not the operator!!) When I was home at Christmas, one of my sisters was upgrading her digital camera and kindly gave me her gently used one. I noticed sometime after I received it that an error message was flashing on the screen. When I looked up the error message in my handy dandy instruction manual, it said to take the camera into a Sony store. Hence, I went to a camera repair shop. The man behind the counter asked me how old the camera was, but I had what is probably a familiar blank look on my face and I told him I had no idea. He then said it was old. (What does THAT mean?!) With a sceptical eye, he finally got around to examining the error message and laughingly told me that it would cost me more than the camera was worth to get the camera fixed. Apparently, the flash is bad. Hmph! Fortunately, I have lots of friends who take much better pictures than I do. Maybe I don't really need a camera. It seems like the universe is sending that message!

Theater fun

Just wanted to gush about 'my' kids in the Integration program. We participated as Centro Vicente Cañas in the Festival of Abilities, to highlight the many capabilities that Other-Abled persons. Our small group put on a mimed sketch with the theme of Human Rights. The photos don't really capture how well they all did, but it was very well received by the audience. It was a fun night overall and one of the girls remarked that she no longer feels alone; seeing all the other kids and young adults who were 'just like her' changed her mindset about her situation. For me, it made all the work we put into the event a very worthy cause.

Before presenting the sketch

On stage . . . LIVE!

Quick update on The Dress

Today I received a visit from Martha, my dressmaker. She informed me that my dress would not be ready until December. My jaw must dropped, because she hurriedly added that her teacher wants the dress to be displayed in the fashion show at the end of the year and therefore I cannot have it until afterwards. I explained to her that I could still be in the fashion show, but that I wanted to use the dress in the meantime. Did I really have to wait until December? After all, I paid for the thing! I really couldn't make any sense of the explanation Martha gave me, so now I have to go talk to the teacher of the tailoring/dressmaking course to figure out what is going on. Wish me luck! These conversations usually aren't as easy as I think they'll be.

Adventures? Check. Maybe one too many.

The crew.

Toro Toro in the distance.

Descending.

Waterfalls

If you look really closely, you will see me in the red jacket.

Sliding down a rock.

sleepy town on Saturday morning

Dinosaur tracks!

Last weekend I jumped at the opportunity to go to Toro Toro, a small pueblo nestled in the mountains about 4 hours from Cochabamba. It was an adventure trip - we hiked, explored caverns, climbed down into and then back out of a canyon where there were waterfalls. I really just wanted to get away from Cochabamba, and it was great to breathe in air that was much less polluted, to walk down streets that were practically dog-free, and to get a couple of days off of work. Day one, traveled to Toro Toro all morning, stopping along the way to take pictures. We went to see the waterfalls of Vergel. Walking down a thousand or so stairs was pretty tiring, but it was a beautiful, peaceful spot where we sat for a few minutes. Climbing the stairs on shaky legs was not as much fun. I went to bed right after we finished dinner - I was exhausted! Day two we went hiking around Ciudad de Itas, looking at the rock formations and taking in the incredible views. Had a quick lunch on the road and then climbed down into a cave, where we stretched and twisted our bodies to try to squeeze through cracks and crevices. At one point, we literally had to crawl through a tunnel that was probably only 4 meters long, but it seemed to get narrower and narrower. Luckily I was able to squeeze through without panicking; it reminded me a little too much of the movie Tremors. That night as I was getting in the shower, I noticed my lower right leg was all bit up and starting to blister. I showed the bites to my guide at dinner that night, and he seemed unconcerned, just that it looked like I was having an allergic reaction and if I wanted to, he would take me to the hospital in the morning. (Huh.) I had a fitful rest that night - my leg had started to throb plus I had nightmares about being trapped in a cave without a light. By morning, the blisters on my leg had grown to the size of a dime, but they seemed okay and I didn't want to miss seeing the dinosaur tracks or the morning hike. We climbed up the side of a mountain to see fossil impressions.

fossils and impressions

out-side of leg

Other side.

It was neat, but I paid dearly, and on the descent, I fell behind the rest of my group because I simply could not keep up with their pace as my leg was really throbbing. I was happy I was headed home to Cochabamba that day, and after a long, long trip back, I was finally able to prop my leg up on some pillows and pass out. Sunday I met up with a friend who used to be a nurse, and she referred me to a young doctor from my parish. Unlike my nurse friend, he seemed unconcerned, but agreed to help me see a dermatologist on Monday morning. In the meantime, I went over to the nurse's house where she cleaned up my wound (because the blisters were starting to seep) and gave me some antibiotics because she said that my bites had become infected and did not look good. Better to be safe than sorry, etc.
Monday morning it hurt a little to walk, but I powered though it and mid-morning I went to see the doctor, who said I had a bacterial infection and needed to be on stronger antibiotics than the ones I was taking. I am also on a regimen of soaking my leg twice a day and putting a bunch of topical ointments on it. It is much better now, so don't let the pictures scare you. I am still trying not to itch . . . whatever bit me has put something in my system (or psyche?) and I feel like I am being bit all the time and my skin tingles and itches. Knock on wood, I haven't had any new bites in the last week, so I don't think I brought the mites home with me. But for good measure, I boiled everything I wore during my trip there - including my backpack. :)

My own personal water war, resolved.

Interesting trivia - Cochabamba put itself on the map during the "water war" of 2000 when US company Bechtel privatized the water, the people protested, and eventually the people won and the privatization of water ended. A Hollywood movie came out about it called 'Tambien la Lluvia' starring Gael Garcia Bernal. It has received good reviews. . . You can google it if you want, because my post has nothing to do with it - I just figured it would be a good plug to get people to know a bit about the country I currently call 'home'. Ha.

No, no. My water war has been with my landlords. When I moved into the apartment, they said that I would have to pay water and electric in addition to rent, which seemed fine. What I did not realize was that there wasn't a meter for the water that I was using. This didn't particularly bother me until my landlady knocked on my door one afternoon and told me that I owed 'x' amount of bolivianos for water. Huh. I asked to see the bill, and she showed it to me - a handwritten note from the city water department, which indicated that the amount of water was for the whole house. Since her family also lived on-site, she was paying the majority of the bill and I didn't make a huge stink about the fact that she was basically pulling a number out of nowhere. Then they took on more renters.The water charges I was paying her turned into a crazy amount (Bolivian standards, not US). The new renters had 4 adults and a young child, but only had to pay a fraction more for water than I did, a singleton who was barely ever home. I must've complained enough to my community here because they encouraged me to TALK to my landlady about it vs. saying it was fine when clearly I had issues with the entire process. Confrontation is not my strongest suit, but one day when she knocked on my door, I was sort of prepared to start a conversation. It went something like this:
"Lorena, I just charged Rosa Bs. XX  for water, your share is Bs. XX and I will pay the rest."
Silence on my part; I was thinking and giving her a look. Then - 
"Nelly, will you please explain to me the process you use to calculate how much you are charging each unit in this building?"
Silence on Nelly the landlady's part. For whatever reason this was oddly encouraging, because from the look on her face, I knew I had stumped her.
"What I need to know is why I am being charged 'X' amount. Perhaps if I understand your calculations, it will be clearer to me."
Silence. Her mouth opened but no response came out. I waited another 10 seconds before I went on.
"It doesn't make sense to me that I live by myself, am gone almost all the time, and pay XX while Rosa and her family are here the majority of the time and pay almost the same amount. Do you see why I am asking you how you are calculating costs?"
Nelly found her voice.
"Well, I really don't have a process. I pay the most because my family is biggest, then Rosa pays XX and you pay XX."
"Yes, I see. However, Rosa is also home all day, flushing toilets, washing clothes for the entire family, cooking, cleaning, etc. and using more water than I am. Do you see why I cannot understand why you charge me almost the same amount as her?"
To which Nelly became really frustrated and said, "Fine. Just pay me whatever you want to pay."
Not the point I was trying to make, but I had made a stand and I thought I had gotten my point across. This was late last year. When I got back from my vacation in the States, Nelly came to my door one day in March to ask for money for water. (Occasionally our tank runs out of water and we have to buy it off of water trucks that lumber up and down the avenue, which is a cost separate from city water.) She said that she would pay for half, that Rosa had paid XX and that I owed her the rest. It was the same *non* process as before. I just looked at her for a few seconds and it was like she knew what I was thinking because she said something like, "I can't ask Rosa to pay any more that I already have." And since I was too tired to get into again, I decided to pay her and be done with it.
Fast forward to tonight: My rent was due, plus Nelly the landlady needed to hand over my electric bill. She had also mentioned last week that she had the water bill and she would be visiting me to settle accounts. When she arrived at my door, she had a basic spreadsheet in her hand that laid out a process for calculating water bill costs! Hallelujah! I was prideful enough to think that I had inspired this change. Wroo-oooong - Nelly said that her daughter, who recently entered university level studies in engineering, told her that THEY were paying too much for water and devised a system that was more equal and just for all parties concerned. And it is. I just hope that it lasts. I am sure Rosa has become rather accustomed to her cheap water bills and may protest. Better her than me!
All in all, it was a nice present. :)

Embarrassment and Pain

Yesterday we had some donors from Chile come visit our community center to check up on some of the building projects they had funded. Somehow I got roped into showing them around one of neighborhoods where 22 families had been chosen to augment their one-room homes into 2-room homes. This is an area on a hillside, and when we were descending said hill on some questionable gravel-like conditions I was thinking to myself, "I hope nobody takes a digger", when the ground beneath me gave way and I found myself going in slow motion down . . .down . . . down. I am not that tall, but it just seemed to take forever to stick my hands out to take the impact instead of my backside. And what I nice surprise awaited me there! Yes, my friends, one of my hands landed in a plant that was nothing but 'espinas', or needles/thorns.

I didn't even notice (at first) because I was horrified to have fallen down in front of witnesses. I jumped right up again and tried to laugh it off. When I dusted my hands off on my pants, I encountered pain - and after looking at my right hand, I freaked out! I had a dozen or more espinas lodged in my skin. I picked out as many as I could right away, but there were at least 6 that were embedded deeply. One of my coworkers was there and after being assured I was all right, he started in on how the plant I fell on was poisonous, and that I was going to lose my hand if I didn't get the rest of the splinters out. Very nice. (He was kidding, of course.) I went home and soaked my hand in warm saltwater for 30 minutes to no avail. Those things weren't moving, but I tried a home remedy I read online, where a baking soda paste is supposed to help speed up the process of expelling splinters, etc. Today I woke up and my hand was still intact, but the entry sites of the splinters were swollen and red. I went into work today and two of my coworkers decided to 'help' me by picking the needles out with their fingernails and what was probably a un-sanitized pin. It was highly painful and effective. I am now left wondering if I have an infected hand. . .  Hm. Thank God for tetanus shots!

Saying "yes" to the dress

the design

Last week, I received a visit from Martha, a woman I got to know last year when her kids were part of the educational scholarship program. She is a very small, very quiet woman who is studying tailoring/dressmaking, and has been attending classes faithfully for several months. I had not seen her in quite some time, so I greeted her warmly and asked about her family, etc. She asked if she could speak to me alone so I figured that something must be wrong, but she only wanted to know if I would to help her out by being a model for a party dress. She timidly told me that I would have to buy the material but that she would make the dress for free, as it is part of her final exam.  I accepted this proposition with a huge smile and immediately made plans to head to the main market "La Cancha" to try to find something appropriate (translated: something I might actually wear once it is made). I have no idea how this project will turn out, but it will certainly help Martha! Here is what I picked out:
1) a design that by US standards is probably passe
2) a lovely flower print that is lilac and gray with a cream colored base AND
3) a purple base color (when the flower print is covering it, it really makes the lilac/purple pop).

Top layer

base color

Wish Martha luck! I'll keep you posted on developments. :)

Rainy Days are Saturdays. . . at least lately

I woke up this Saturday morning to a light pattering of rain outside. I looked at my bedside clock - 10:15 a.m.
Wow! Not something that usually happens to me, as I am an early riser. I suppose a combination of being sick all week and yesterday's workout probably should be thrown into the mix of reasons for sleeping in, but the rain is key. For whatever reason, the dozens of dogs in the neighborhood tend not to bark if it is raining. I'm sure they're curled up on their respective owners' stoops or seeking shelter somewhere, but because they aren't in the street, there is less reason for all the drivers to use their horns (which also rouse people from their dreams).
Anyway, the rainy season in Cochabamba finally seems to be petering off. For me, the season means I have to deal with small inconveniences of walking through flooded streets and mud, waiting for a sunny moment to wash my clothes, or sitting in a damp spot when taking public transportation. For many of the families whom I serve, the situation is much more dire.

 

 Me in the Southern Zone, after a house visit

After a hard rain, the water comes down the mountainsides and floods all the houses. There is very little shrubbery or plant life on the hillsides because the dry season is so long and hot that the sun ends up burning/killing everything. Also, any trees in the area have long been hacked down by those who are looking for firewood. A few weeks into the rainy season, it appears like the mountains are lush and green, but it is deceiving - the plants aren't enough to keep the water back. If a house wasn't built well or is older, you can imagine the damage one rainy season causes! I was out making house visits the other day and actually saw the "sewers" backing up and bubbling raw sewage into the open, after a mere 10 minute downpour. (The smell, I imagine, was close to the Bog of Stench in the movie Labyrinth.) My water engineer friend tells me that the flooding situation will only get worse as more streets get developed (without necessarily adding sewers) and there is less available earth to soak up the rain.

Isn't it funny how one moment we are praying for rain and the next we are wishing it away? (Well, that has been my experience growing up in the Midwest anyway.) In about 3 months, I'll be tired of sunny, hot days where every vehicle that passes me by on the road creates a cloud of dust that gets everywhere. I don't even want to think of what is IN that dust. . .
For now, I'll just be thankful for a rather restful night's sleep!

Fiery strikes

Image from Los Tiempos website

Today marks the first day of a 'paro de transporte', or transportation strike, in Cochabamba. The public transit drivers are lobbying for a price change in fares - from Bs.1.50 (US $0.21) to Bs. 2 (US $0.29) - and the general public is resisting. As seems to be custom here in Bolivia, if you want to be heard, a strike of some kind is in order. So, what does a paro entail? It means that none of the transit drivers will be offering service on their routes, and it could even mean that they block the roads and prevent other drivers (with private cars or motorcycles) from using the roads, as seen in the photo. It isn't necessarily violent, but they do mean business. Fares have not gone up for quite a while, and the transit drivers are citing the rising prices on other goods and services as the reason for making this the moment to raise the price of public transportation.

I work with poorer populations in the southern zone of the city, and I wonder how much this change could affect them. I mean, 50 bolivian cents probably doesn't sound like much, but when a person is only earning 25 bolivianos a day and trying to support a family, every cent counts. I can certainly understand why they are resisting the price hike.

It will be interesting to see how this all turns out. The latest report just came out that the strikers in the city's center are getting restless and starting to vandalize private property. I'm glad that I am far away from that action! In the meantime, I will definitely be getting some additional exercise as I'll be walking/biking to and from work until the paro lifts.

Gearing up for the next stretch

Winter!

I am back in Bolivia after a 5-week visit to the States. It was wonderful! I had missed the cold weather, snow, and air so cold that it takes your breath away. (I know, I know - it probably sounds strange to those of you who live in it full time for 6 months out of the year, but it is beautiful to me.) Also great was meeting the newest members of my ever-growing family, hanging out with my family and playing games (even euchre!), catching up with friends, and -though I hate to admit it- shopping. I went back to WI with a pretty clear list of what I would 'need' to get me through the rest of my time in Bolivia. It was comforting to try on clothes and have them fit, or to walk into a store that I knew would carry exactly the item I was looking for. The main market in Cochabamba (la Cancha) is great, but when I am seeking something in particular, I am often told by various vendors that the article I want is "mas alla" (over there), followed by a wave of an arm, gesturing in a random direction. A rather vague description, wouldn't you agree? Compare that to a store in Manty which I will only call "FF" and any clerk in the store can tell you not only in what aisle the item is stored, but also where in the aisle it is located and on what shelf.  I tell you, I really felt very spoiled by such specificity. Anyway, one item that alluded me almost until the end of my stay was a device that I could use on dogs - to get them to stop barking. (Although after having been bit twice by dogs, my parents were really pushing me to buy mace or pepper spray.) My neighborhood is full of dogs that bark for what seems like all day and all night. Although I have adapted to an extent, there have been occasions in which I have dreamed of owning a weapon that would give those dogs an actual reason for barking at night. Since buying a gun was out of the question, I researched online and found some training devices that claim to send out high pitched noises that would cause a dog to stop barking. Well, I thought, why not try it?  Desperate times call for desperate measures, after all. So I went ahead with my experiment and bought an "As Seen On TV" de-barker with hopes of solving the problem. Each night before retiring, I turn the device on.  Happily, I have noticed a difference. My landlords own two dogs that are human friendly but bark at anything else (and set off the dogs of neighboring houses) and they have stopped barking every time a stray dog passes by the house. At least during nighttime hours. There is a short range on the device - only about 30 feet. . . I am tempted to ask my parents to send more so that I can plant de-barkers at specific places in the barrio. But that might change the 'charm' of the general area, so for now I will resist that urge and just be happy that Doggies One and Two have calmed down.
During my visit, many people from the States asked me what my next steps are in regards to my future.  I have less than a year and a half left on my contract and mostly I am trying to take each day as it comes. I am not sure if I will sign up for another 3 year contract, but in the upcoming months I hope to reach a point of clarity on that issue.  Thanks to all who are supporting me in my journey! I will try to be a better blogger and keep you all entertained and up-to-date on the happenings here in Cochabamba.