With Friends

Neal and I are sitting on the right side of the church, with the men.  We are clearly outnumbered by the women on the left side, many of whom sit on the floor in traditional Aymara dress: the bowler hat, colorful skirts, long braids and aprons.  One of the women is breastfeeding.  All the way up front, seated sideways so I can see her face, is a miraculously old looking woman, with a child-like grin. Emma and Annie sit on benches; even Emma looks a bit out of place, even though this is the church she grew up in.   

A few moments ago the four of us travelers had been called to the front while the congregation sang a song of welcome.  We sang along from our Spanish/Aymara hymnbooks, not sure what else to do.  At the end of the song, in what seemed a spontaneous gesture, a few men came forward to shake our hands.  Soon, the whole church was up.  After the first few, I started to get the hang of the “handshake-shoulder pat-handshake” greeting.  I found myself moved by this moment, especially shaking the last hand, that of the grinning woman, who wouldn’t let go as she whispered a long greeting in Aymara.

The lead pastor is now on the mic.  We have been in the chilly room for two hours already, and Neal and I are both thinking about lunch.  I find it hard to follow the sermon, especially as it is unfolding in both Spanish and Aymara.  Instead, I distract myself by trying to decipher the plastic wall hanging behind the pastor, whose voice is gaining speed and volume.  The wall hanging is titled El Plan de los Edades (The Plan of the Ages).  It begins on the left with Eternity, and works its way through generation and degeneration to the present day.  From there, it begins to follow the book of revelations, depicting the arrival of the Anti-Christ, and a final battle between good and evil.  The final age is one of regeneration, followed again by Eternity.  Perhaps we are meant to imagine a full circle loop at this point, though there is no arrow to guide us there.

The chapter and verse quotations, mostly from Paul’s letter to the Romans and Revelations (apocalipsis in Spanish) become fewer and farther between, and the pastor begins to speak less from notes.  He is speaking more in Aymara now, but he’s also repeating himself in Spanish so I find myself focusing in.  He is drawing a picture of the paradise that awaits those of us hear the Holy Spirit in our souls.  He entreats us to listen closely to the voice inside of us.  “We don’t listen to our hearts in this world, not enough.  This is how it is.  Instead, we are tranquil; we go along on our way.”  His words hit me, harder than I was expecting.

One of the seated women in traditional Chula dress walks forward and kneels on the floor in front of the stage, her elbows resting on the bench in front of her.  Another does the same, then the man seated to my right.  A woman moves forward and I can hear her praying even over the pastor’s microphoned voice.  Soon about half of the church is down on their knees, and the pastor is audibly emotional, little sobs entering his speech.  He is mostly speaking in Aymara now.  Soon almost everyone is on their knees, either up front or on the floor next to the benches.  Neal whispers “When in Rome…” and drops down also.  I look over at Annie who is still seated, and I feel torn by a pressure to fit in and a desire not to leave Annie as the only one seated.  I take the middle path and bend down, placing my head on the back of the bench in front of me, my hands together.  I close my eyes and take in the sounds.  Clearly there is some suffering being let out in this room, voices rising and falling together, a mumble and hum of emotionally charged speech.

I think about how private the Aymara culture usually is, how emotionally reticent they are from day to day.  People's lives are kept mostly separate.  It isn't until our last day in Batallas that Neal and I will see the inside of Annie's house, and then only the courtyard.  This moment of shared suffering seems to respond to a cultural need for release, for sharing, along with a spiritual need.

Above Batallas

I find myself silently praying, “Our Father, who art in heaven…” a prayer my mom taught me when I was young.  I can see her there, standing beside my bed.  I remember her reaching out to demonstrate the “lead us not into temptation” part, to help me remember it.  This visual cue comes back even now whenever I say this prayer.

Slowly, the congregants finish their prayers and move back to their seats.  The Pastor gestures to a young man who comes forward to play the keyboard.  It is set to “organ.”  There is a sense of winding down.  Most everyone is back to their seats.  I begin to reflect on this scene, pretty different from any Quaker Meeting I have attended before, and to think again about lunch.  But now a woman is on her feet, speaking out in prayer.  While the kneeling prayers blended together, this one becomes the center of attention.  I don’t know what she’s saying, but it is clearly an entreaty.  Is she asking for strength in the face of something tragic, or is it simply for the day-to-day hardships in this cold, dry place:  waking up, boiling water for tea with bread, elbowing onto a mini-bus to La Paz with your recently harvested potatoes, trying to sell them, coming home, cooking, washing in cold water, drinking more tea, eating some bread, going to bed under seven blankets, waking up, boiling water.

Three women pray like this, and then the organ dies down and the pastor says a few concluding words.  Next thing I know we are standing up and heading to the back of the church.  After the service we share an aptapi (Aymara for potluck) with a number of the congregants.  It is a great meal, interrupted by a rain storm that sends us inside.  We brought the food with us.  It was lovely to meet so many people who were a part of Emma's spiritual community growing up.

After fleeing the rain.  That's Rosa across from me, a very sassy lady.

Marshmallows, Stones and Cement

The search for high speed internet that works with my laptop (where all our photos are) continues.  More boring text for now.  Pictures will come, some day.  Maybe tomorrow...

Sorata is the birthplace of Bolivian Quakerism.  In 1918 some Evangelical Quaker missionaries came here, to this mountain valley, to spread the good news in this entirely Catholic country.  They did a good job.  There are now more Quakers per capita in Bolivia than in any other country in the world.  Many of them still live in Sorata (though not as many as in the Mega Churches of La Paz and El Alto).  One of their projects is a small internado (boarding house) just a few blocks off the central square. 

We arrived at the internado Thursday night after checking in at our nearby hotel.  The plan was to hang out with the 18 young people who live there, along with Magaly (the director) and Eusebio (the dorm sponsor/facilities director/everything else).  There are many high school age students in this valley, but only one high school.  Some of the students are a six hour walk away, so it’s impractical for them to go to and from school each day.  Hence the boarding house.  Students stay here during the week and walk home on weekends. 

We were first struck by three signs in their small dining area.  One was a daily schedule.  They wake up a little earlier than we do at Scattergood, but otherwise it’s pretty similar.  Another sign was the list of crews: each student helps in the kitchen a couple times each week.  The third sign was a list of faltas graves (major rules) that looked quite a bit like our list of major rules.  One rule that seemed hard to enforce: “don’t fall in love with any other boarders.” 

We built a fire that night, and we thought we might like to go out and get some marshmallows to roast.  Neal, Magaly and I went from small corner store to small corner store looking for gomitas.  Eventually we found some, but they were of the tiny variety: one centimeter cubes.  What the heck?  We bought them, and as a joke I said that we should buy some toothpicks to roast them with.  Magaly thought that was a great idea, so we went ahead and got some toothpicks also.  The ensuing hilarity did a lot to break the awkwardness of the language barrier. 

The next day we came back to do some work.  The students were all at school, but Magaly and Eusebio had plans for us.  We had thought that we were going to do some planting at a nearby garden run by the school, just from ten to noon.  It turned out that they were no longer gardening, so the job was instead to fix a large section of the patio floor.  There were many cracks in the rock and concrete where water was getting in, a vicious cycle.  The fun part of the job came first: smashing up the existing bad area (Neal was our MVP here).  After that, we needed to wash the stones, mix concrete, replace the stones, and cement it all together.  This turned out to be quite a painstaking process (Annie was the best at the detail work).  We arrived early, a little after nine, and ended up working until nearly four (including a break for lunch).  There were moments of tiredness but at the end we could admire a job well done.

El Cuaquero

A note--No pictures again, because I can´t make my computer work in this internet cafe.  Sorry.  Will insert pictures into this post, and do a similar photo dump as last time when I can get my computer and the internet to be friends... (also, I can´t figure out how to make a colon on this keyboard, so there are lots of dashes in this post)

Thursday Morning.  I go through my usual routine--emerge from under seven blankets, mix boiling water with cold water to wash my face out in the courtyard, resting the plastic tub on a stump.  Modesta, Emma´s mother, encourages me to drink something hot right away.  This morning it is coca tea.  She also warns me about the low door to the kitchen for the fifteenth time.  We chat about her day ahead selling snacks in the square; it loks rainy so there may not be much business.  This day is different, though, from the previous few--we´re going on a trip.

Annie, Neal, Emma and I sit in her parents´ courtyard, looking ahead at our schedule in the now-emerged sun, waiting for her brothers to arrive.  We also look back at the trip so far, and ahead--there have been some hard days, but we feel good about how things are going.  We will be driving today with her brothers Andres and Solomon, and her father Militon.  We are heading north, first to Achacachi and then to Sorata (where I am now, frustrated at the internet cafe).  Solomon arrives with the mini-bus and we load in, our daypacks stuffed for the four day trip.

In Achacachi, a mid-sized Aymará town with a large regional dairy, we buy some food in the market (bread, avocado, bananas, chizitos and other sundry snacks) and then head to a small Quaker boarding school, El Cuaquero. Andres and Solomon both attended this school years ago, and they tell us stories as we explore.  They are fun to watch banter, and Andres is particularly hilarious.  A small door off the street opens up into a sprawling series of structures--a church that hosts the yearly meeting, holding thousands; two dormitories; the classroom building; a futsal/basketball court.  Fifteen years ago this school had hundreds of students.  Because of civil unrest before Evo Morales´s presidency, and economic pressure to move to the city (most Aymará move to El Alto, a rapidly growing suburb perched above La Paz) the school has had a some hard times recently.  It was down to only a couple dozen students a few years ago, but is now growing again, up into the fourties or fifties.

We start the day chatting with Alvaro, the very youthful new principal of the school.  We meet his father also, along with some members of the school board ("the Junta").  We share a great potluck lunch with these folks--we´re getting used to the Bolivian potluck.  Lots of potatoes, oca (looks like a carrot, tastes like a sweet potato), cheese, hot sauce, sometimes some meat, more potatoes.  After lunch, students begin to materialize; Neal and I play some futsal (small-sided soccer) with some elementary school kids and Francisco, an old guy with boundless energy.

After the military-style roll call, we introduce ourselves to all the students (lined up by grade). We´re getting pretty used to this drill, as this is our third different school.  Neal and I head to an elementary school classroom where we are faced with only six students (this will be a breeze).  We decide to run the "how to have a short introductory conversation" routine out of our bag of tricks (as I said, we´re getting used to this). These students have had very little English instruction, and never by anyone who speaks English.  It goes well.  The next class is bigger, and we go to the "head-shoulders-knees and toes" routine.  This one is fun because it involves a lot of speaking English to the kids and making them figure out what you're talking about. By the end of the class, we´re pretty sure they know some body parts, colors, and things in the classroom. Or at least they got to smile a lot and move around.

Annie and Emma are off doing something else that sounds fun.  All I know is that Annie later shows us a sweet little undulating box made out of rolled up newspaper bits.

After school, Neal and I play some basketball with teachers and students, then futsal.  We are pretty confident about basketball (playing on a team that includes Emma´s brothers) until one of the opposing teachers, a chunky young woman named Eunice, starts making every shot she takes.  Luckily, no one other than the gringos is much taller than 5´5" and our height advantage carries the day.  Soccer is fun and ends in a tie, I think, when we need to get on the road.  Neal and I, still not totally used to the altitude approaching 13,000 feet are happy to be done.We spend a last bit of time with the teachers, eat a sandwich, and then jump back in the van, off to Sorata.

And we´ll tell you about this place soon!  (hopefully with pictures)...

Heart,

Sam

Sleeping In A Stranger's Home.

I never thought routines would be what saved me on this trip, but hey, who knows everything right? The beginnning of the homestays were kind of rough. My spanish was shaky, I didn´t know the people, and I was suddenly on my own. The noises outside were loud and would carry on into the night. The nonstop barking of dogs and the fact that I was sleeping alone in a strangers house made my sleeping sporatic at best. i would wake up every couple of hours, with the party outside raging on, and the dogs still barking at each other across town. The second night was not much better and I cried myself to sleep, while playing my music loud enough to drown out the noise, but quiet enough that I. could fall asleep. Come the third night, I had a breakthrough. I finally slept the whole night. I have since decided that it was probably because it was raining that night and all of the dogs (and people) were in dry hiding spots sleeping. But also some part, perhaps even a larger part, was because I had settled into my routine.

Wake up at 8 (but lets be honest, it was probably 820 before i finally dragged myself out of bed) and get ready for the day. Breakfast was at 830 with my host mother, Ilda and occasionally my host sister Nilda and her two little children. Breakfast consisted of some type of bread with either tea or weak hot chocolate (but who is going to turn down hot chocolate, even if it is weak). I would then wash the dishes and wait to be picked up at 9 by Sam, Emma and Neal to go do whatever project we had planned for that day. That usually lasted until 4 or 430 when I woulde be dropped off at my house for the night.

There were a couple nights evenings when we would have té, around 415 or 430. Té consists of bread and some kind of hot beverage. Most evenings though, I got home too late to enjoy té, and I would just go to my room and hang out until 630 when I would go out to the kitchen  to help make dinner, which usually meant play with the kids while Nilda and Ilda made dinner. Dinner was at around 7 or 715 and after eating I washed the dishes before returning to my room, and they to theirs by 745. The time between then and sleeping was spent listening to music and reading.

I am thankful that I stuck with it, because with a few bonding moments comiserating about girl problems with my host family, and comparing different things in Bolivia and the US, I have really come to enjoy my host family and everything I am experiencing. There are still hard moments, that is for sure, but I know that I can always go home (to my host family) and complain about it in my broken spanish (although that is improving greatly!). I cannot believe we only have one more week in Bolivia, and I am looking forward to all of the bonding moments to come.

I am not really sure why most of this blog post is in past tense, but it may have something to do with the fact that right now we are in a nice town called Sorata, and not staying with our host families. Tomorrow I will return to Batallas and my nice routine, and all of this will become present tense once again.

I will try and post some pictures of them sometime soon.

Good__(enter whatever time of day it is as you are reading this)____, I hope you are doing well!

Adios from Bolivia! - Annie

(Also, writing on the keyboards here is a pain in the butt because everything is moved around and there are added keys. Just thought you should know that.)