Hi everyone
Welcome to blog number 2 (written from
Tuesday 23rd onwards).(It's another long blog, but you get 4 pictures as a special treat). As I write this the weather has changed from rainy
and cold to muggy with threatening stormy clouds rolling down from
the mountains surrounding us. Opposite our house in the East of
Cochabamba is the biggest statue of Christ in the world – 14cm
bigger than the famous one in Rio. His head and shoulders are often
shrouded in cloud. We are going to see him close up on Friday, and I
hope he has forgiven me for leaving the sermon halfway through last
Sunday.
I have been practising my Spanish on
the people of Bolivia. Here is who I have met so far:
Juan Pablo – our taxi driver
yesterday. When I asked him his name he said John Paul, as he wanted
to practise his English. I said ah, mucho gusto Juan Pablo. He was
from La Paz, but had lived in Cochabamba for 8 years. Meanwhile in
the back Zara was hanging on to the door, which had flown open as we
went round a corner – generally the doors do stay closed, and
generally there are seat belts, but you never quite know. Health and
safety isn't really a priority in Bolivia, or rather they don't have
enough money to fix things when they break. One thing we have to
remember when getting in or out of a taxi is not to slam the door –
Bolivians are very connected to their things, and if you hurt their
things, you are hurting them. We should be quiet and not talk too
much English in taxis, as this makes the Bolivian taxi driver feel
excluded, especially as you are laughing – they will assume that
you are laughing at them. They have been exploited over the years by
various other nations, and treated very badly by white people –
when they see white people like us therefore they are reminded of
their anger towards being exploited and colonized, and they assume
that we are here to exploit them or rip them off, or that we are
generally untrustworthy in some way, and that we are all from
America. We need to make sure we don't make them feel like that, so I
always try to have a conversation with them and tell them we're from
England. Sometimes they don't want to talk, which is also fine.
Alice – who sold me a burger in Cine
Centro on Sunday – it's a kind of Westernised restaurant mall,
where you can get fast food. Mauge and Angelika took us there in case
we wanted something like that instead of all the Bolivian food we've
been eating. I had a burger, and then an ice cream. When buying my
burger I had a big conversation with Alice, who served me. She was
really friendly and wanted to know all about what we were doing in
Cochabamba, and whether we liked it. The people here are so friendly,
and once you say 'no soy de Estados Unidos' (I'm not from the US),
then they are even more friendly. I had maracuya flavoured ice cream,
and the next day I had chirimayo, both of which are Bolivian/Peruvian
fruits, and both really tasty.
Favian – today's taxi driver after we
went to town to look at the markets. I asked him how his holiday was
(yesterday was a holiday, un feriado), he said it was fine, and he'd
spent it at home with his parents. I asked what the festival was
about (it goes on until the end of February and seems to mainly
involve children throwing water balloons at people in the street). I
didn't understand his answer. This is a common problem once you start
a conversation with people, and there's only so many times you can
say 'puedes repetir' (please repeat), and then you have to revert to
nodding and saying si and smiling. I offered him a biscuit, which he
accepted and in return I got his business card. Good bit of
relationship building I thought. [NB: I understand that yesterday's
holiday is to do with Bolivia declaring itself the plurinational
nation of Bolivia, rather than the Republic of Bolivia, as it was
previously – in order to include and recognise all races of
Bolivians, ie the previously excluded indigenous races].
Zaida – she is our lovely abuela
(grandmother) who looks after us in our apartment. She has a 17 year
old son, Santiago, who we are going to meet soon. He's in Santa Cruz
at the moment as he had 3 days off school for the feriado. She bought
him the flight back as a present, but he took the bus there – an
overnight bus. My memory of overnight buses in this part of the world
is that no matter how many sleeping pills you take, the fear will
keep you awake. I heard that 95% of Bolivian roads are unpaved, ie
just gravel, and with lots of holes in them. Anyway, he will be back
soon, safely on his aeroplane.
Zaida cooks all our food for us, which
is all Bolivian food – lots of soups for lunch mainly, with quinoa,
potatoes, carrots, beans, peas, and chicken in them. In the evening
we have things like rice, with fried platanos and chicken, or other
types of meat, and sometimes pasta – tonight was spaghetti
bolognaise with Bolivian cheese - quesilla. For breakfast we have
bread, with butter and jam, or oats with warm milk – kind of like
readybrek rather than porridge. We have made a washing up rota to
help Zaida, as she also has to do our washing and cleaning, while
we're out at lessons or at our projects once they've started (I find
it strange having a person who looks after us like this, but I guess
it's necessary while we're so busy). Anyway Zaida is the lucky
recipient of me practising all my Spanish... she doesn't seem to
mind, she's really really lovely. Yesterday we podded peas for her,
these are called 'arbejas' (and bees are 'abejas' – I think it's
quite a weird coincidence that these words are so similar in both
languages) – she buys all the vegetables at the big market called
La Cancha, and we are hoping to go with her for a visit – it's best
to go these places with the locals and everything becomes much
easier. Today we podded a kind of large broad bean, which is an
'haba'. You pod it from its pod, then take it's outer shell off, and
then it's there in the middle. She explained that the bean is wearing
clothes which are pantalones (trousers – the pod), a camisa (its
shirt – the shell), and a little tie, which is that bit at the top.
I have taken a photo to explain, in case it's not clear:
Alicia – she lives with us too in our
house, and speaks really good English. She teaches Spanish at the
school we go to, and also is very involved with her church. Today she
taught me how to say thunder and lightning, which is what was
happening outside, and lightning is rayos, but I can't remember
thunder now. Storm is la tormenta.
So today is day 3 of Spanish lessons,
we're going pretty fast through our text book. I'm in a class with
Nikki, Tom, and Mariam. We have about 5 or 6 different teachers, and
2 classes a day which are 45 minutes each with a break in between.
(sorry for the boring details, but just in case you were wondering).
Today we learnt how to talk about people's personalities and physical
appearance which was really useful and I'm going to revise the new
adjectives tonight.
In the afternoons we have orientation
meetings, yesterday was with David and was about safety and security
in Bolivia. There are lots of risks in certain parts of the city, but
lots of things we can do to stay safe, is a basic summary of his
talk. We can never go anywhere alone, and if we're out after dark we
have to take a taxi to get home from wherever we are. We use radio
taxis to get around everywhere – there are buses, but as yet we
haven't been on them, and I don't think we're allowed to. It's
strange thinking of all the travelling I did in this part of the
world previously without having anyone there to orientate me and tell
me what risks were all around me. It's certainly useful to know, and
to know what the Bolivian perception is of foreigners in general, and
how that should inform the way we interact with them, and act as a
group of foreigners.
We discussed other things like our
expectations of what we will get out of the projects, and the
expectations of our partner organisations (our groups is working with
Mosoj Yan, the street kids centres, and the other group is working
with an orphanage and school called Oeser). The obvious beneficiary
of the whole ICS scheme is the partner organisation and the children
they work with, but also we are obviously going to benefit in many
ways – such as being in a new challenging situation, and realising
what we are capable of, and learning some Spanish, and learning about
the issues surrounding International Development and global poverty,
and hopefully returning to England and this informing our next move
in life. The UK government has invested a lot of money from their aid
budget in sending us here, so we have to do the best we can do and
hopefully be inspired about continuing in this kind of work when we
return to England.
We've also had 2 sessions with Mauge
about the cultural differences between Bolivia and England, which
boils down to the differences between an individualistic society and
a collectivist society. 85% of the world is collectivist. It is
fascinating learning about all these differences, especially having
experienced a lot of them first hand from living and spending time in
Latin American countries. The main concept of collectivism is that
without the group, you cannot survive. There is no such thing as
personal preference, or privacy – decisions are made collectively
and relationships with your family and friends are more important
than absolutely anything else – spending time and having fun is a
priority – which is not to say that work still doesn't get done, it
just gets done with different priorities in mind. In a perfect
version of collectivism, the grand parents would bring up the grand
children while the parents go to work.
Another main difference is the
perception of time. If we have a dinner party in England for example
and invite someone and tell them it starts at 6pm, we would expect
them to turn up at 6pm, and be a bit upset if they turned up at 630pm
without an explanation. Here, if you invite someone to come to your
dinner party at 6pm, they would start getting ready at 6pm, and they
would not ever turn up at 6pm as that would be rude as they would
presume you would need more time to get things ready. If you go to
for example a birthday party for a friend, the same applies, - but in
this case if they are a good friend you would ask them if you should
come earlier than the 4pm start time, and they would accept this. So
you would get there at 3pm and when you get there, they would ask you
to help by going off to buy the cake, blowing up the balloons,
getting the drinks ready, generally doing all the preparation with
them. We would think this is extreme disorganisation, but the
emphasis in collectivist societies, is on people doing things
together. The preparation for the party that you do together is the
important thing, it builds relationships, and strengthens feelings of
interdependency, which is the key concept of collectivism. If the
party lasts 30 minutes, and the preparation took 5 hours, but you all
did it together, then that is the point.
Mauge is also making us very aware of
the fact that the best thing we can do in our projects while here is
to build relationships with the Bolivian staff and the kids we will
be working with. She told us that these kids have been abused, have
taken drugs, been kicked out of their homes, or left of their own
accord. They have zero self worth, and the absolute best thing we can
do whilst here is just to spend time with them and make them feel
worthy. We don't have to teach amazing things, or achieve miracles,
but just spending time doing something like making a hot chocolate
with them, or some basic arts and crafts, or playing games, will make
them feel that they are worth spending time with, and therefore that
perhaps there is some hope for them in life. It is all about
relationship building, not ticking things off a to-do list. We may
have to have planning meetings with staff, Mauge said these might
take hours and hours, or circular chatting, of everyone having their
opinion heard, and of finally maybe making some kind of agreement or
plan of work. But the main emphasis is that everyone is part of the
process, and that everyone is heard. In England to achieve the same
outcome could take 10 minutes perhaps, but that is the point – we
are motivated by outcomes and plans and projects and achievements in
our work, not motivated by building relationships primarily.
A collectivist society relies on
connections and networking – you might get a job through a friend
or cousin – what we would call nepotism and perceive somewhat
negatively, here is an essential part of life. If you jump a red
light and your cousin is a policeman, he will let you off – loyalty
to family is far and away more important than sticking to the rules
and the principles. [We do have some of these concepts in our
societies in fact too, there can be some overlapping between the two
types of society].This in turn does mean that many abuses within
families go unreported as the disloyalty it would show and the shame
it would bring to the family is unthinkable, so the mother may let
the father keep abusing the children rather than report it.
Corruption is accepted in all parts of life here.
The customer is absolutely never right
here. There is no accountability for businesses providing proper
services – if you buy something and it breaks, you will not get a
refund. This reminds me of buying a small speaker for my ipod in
India which broke, and they said it was our fault at the shop and we
typically westernly stood there shouting and saying we would call the
police. Mauge explained that westerners who stand there shouting and
making a fuss about a customer related issue, will just look stupid
and be ignored. This is pretty much what happened in the Indian
speaker scenario, and now it all makes sense. I do wish someone had
told me this before I did all that travelling.....
It is totally unacceptable to say no to
a Bolivian if they invite you to some event, or offer you some food.
If you reject that, you are rejecting them, and given they have a
history of cultural rejection, then they are extremely sensitive to
any more of it. If you really can't go to something you're invited
to, you have to make an excuse like saying you have a prior
appointment, but that you will try to change it and try your hardest
to come. They know this means that you won't come, but it is a very
indirect and gracious way of saying no, and they can handle that. If
you really can't say yes to some food you are offered, you must ask
if you can take it home with you, or explain that your stomach is
very sensitive, or that you have been told by whoever you are working
for, eg Tearfund, that you can't eat that particular food – as long
as there is an external reason for you saying no, it is just about
acceptable. Communication here is indirect – you don't see road
signs, you don't have many signs at airports, or bus stations for
example – the reason is that you are supposed to belong to a group
in a collectivist society, and that is how you would get your
information. You would not rely on written instructions like we do,
because you would just know things from your belonging to a group.
You would never find instructions for how to behave, for example in a
classroom, like you would in the west – you would just know it by
how you have been brought up, or by seeing the consequences of
misbehaving. I can now understand the reasons behind a lot of the
things that I found so frustrating when living in Belize – like
lack of information, lack of time keeping, lack of signage etc.
Authority here is absolute, and never
to be questioned – hierarchy is very important, in the family it is
the father, then the mother, then the siblings in order of age that
have the power, in descending order, and there is a distinct gap
between authority figures and those beneath them. You would not
question your teacher, or boss, the way we do – you would trust in
them as they are the authority figures, and you would respect them.
Mauge explained how these children have
ended up living on the streets and getting hooked on glue. It all
comes back to the mines. There are huge amounts of natural resources
here in Bolivia, mainly tin and silver. Potosi and La Paz seem to be
the main places for mining, and as mentioned previously Potosi used
to be the richest city in the world. However, the mines ran out of
minerals in around 1982 which meant that 300,000 workers lost their
jobs. The government supported them for some time after that, but the
country would have entirely collapsed if they had continued, they
just didn't have the money in the government to keep helping them.
This meant that a log of the ex miners turned to alcohol - they had
no other job options as all they knew was mining and there were now
no mines. Through the alcoholism and desperation, they then either
left their families entirely or started abusing them (3 out of 5
Bolivian girls are being or have been abused, and 1 in 5 boys). If
they left the families, the mother may find a new partner, who often
would start abusing the children too.
The kids therefore very often ended up
on the streets, stealing and begging, got hooked on glue, and found
new 'families' there, ie gangs, which is where our project comes in
to try and help them.
Another side effect of the closing of
the mines was that many of the ex miners moved to the region called
Chapare, and became coca growers and therefore drug trafficking
increased. You can earn 10 times as much money growing coca than you
can growing sugar or coffee for example. This is where Morales
emerged as a leader, as it is the epicentre of the coca trade, which
always had to fight for its right to continue, against US
interference – they want to be seen to be stamping out the coca
production here as that is good for their public image, without
taking into consideration the effect that can have on the livelihood
of the thousands of coca farmers. I have never studied economics or
whatever you call this subject, but it's very interesting to learn
about the direct socio-economic link between the collapse of the
mining industry and the abuse, drug and family problems that ensued.
I think that's enough for now anyway, I
have some homework to do for tomorrow's Spanish class. The others are
watching a pirate copy of the Life of Pi, which I've seen, so in an
entirely non-collectivist way am not with the group but writing this
instead. In other news, we went to the market today near the post
office, and looked at lots of traditional Bolivian handicraft things;
I asked Alicia what book she was reading this afternoon, and she told
me it was one about a particular chapter of the bible, and asked if I
read the bible – not really I said – ah, not yet you mean,
she replied. Eek.
Adios chicos, Lucia Pepinillo xxx ps here's some more photos for you:
from left - nikki, shivon, lee (the other team leader), and me, podding peas!
testing testing
ReplyDeleteloving the blog so far pepinillo xxx
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