A few more little things

First of all, Erica in San Francisco pointed this out on the listserv we're both on, and I just have to say that THIS is why I really, really love San Francisco. Never let it be said that embittered leftists don't have a sense of humor:

http://presidentialmemorial.org/


Okay and the other thing is that I put a bunch of pictures up on the internet (after a whole bunch of hemming and hawing cause I am not exactly "tech-savvy", to say the least). So I don't know if this link will work or not, but I think so, so give it a shot if you've got a few minutes to kill:

http://picasaweb.google.com/veganpike

And finally, last but not least, if you are a California voter, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE be sure to vote in the upcoming summer elections to say NO to the repeal of rent control. If this legislation gets overturned, me and basically everyone I know in SF will be homeless, and I am not even exagerrating at all. It really is just like that. My landlord has made it crystal clear that she wants to up the rent once I leave, since she won't let anyone else on my lease, as that would guarantee them the same rate I'm getting (which, at nearly $2,000 a month, isn't exactly a steal as it is).
Anyway, climbing down from the soapbox now, so yeah, that's all...

xoxo, Pike

Esperanza de Libertad, continued.

I’m back! In La Paz, that is…

I had a fabulous time at Esperanza de Libertad, in spite of the incessant insect bites, tropical heat and humidity, and constant cleaning of animal poo off of everything in sight.

This past week we did all kinds of work: we planted yucca, harvested rice, cleared a bunch more grass and weeds with machetes (not easy, especially since the first day our machetes were really dull- it made a world of difference when we sharpened them!), and I found myself furiously chopping firewood in 90-degree sun on more than one occasion, since there is no gas or electricity there and we need the lenas to cook with. But most importantly, we got a new monkey!

The newest member of the Esperanza clan was named Negrita (little black one), but I renamed her Paula since I figured that two nearly identical spider monkeys named “black one” was a bit much (the other one’s name is El Preto, which is Portuguese for black). She was living in an open yard behind someone’s house, tied to a tree almost all of the time. She’s smaller than Preto and a lot more shy; in fact, she was completely terrified when we came to get her, shrieking and backing away like we were trying to kill her. But she has acclimated really well, and is already holding her own against Preto, who can be something of a playful bully, and we let her off the cord after only 2 days because it was obvious that she felt more comfortable.

On her second day there, we discovered a super disgusting, gnarly wound on her finger that has apparently been festering there for a long time, because the whole tip is basically rotted off and when we squeezed it and cut away the dead part, there were tons and tons of microscopic eggs inside- ewwww!!! I’m not generally a squeamish person, but this was almost too much for me. Between the pus, the blood, the dead skin, the open wound and then the eggs, I have to admit I was kind of freaking out. But we got all the nasty stuff out eventually, and disinfected it with some super heavy duty animal wound cleaner, so hopefully it will heal up okay now. I was concerned because she kept gnawing at it, but it did look a lot better the next day so fingers crossed. If not, it’s time for the old antibiotics.

Ixiamas, the small town nearest to Esperanza, also turned out to be a really sweet little place. Franci knows just about everyone and so hanging out with her meant I got a warm reception. We went out to the “disco” on Saturday night and had a lot of fun dancing to music I would never normally dance to, with tons and tons of sweet boys I would never normally dance with! They were all really curious about me, both because I’m a foreigner and because of my tattoos , so I got to meet about half the town’s eligible male population, who all turned out to be very sweet. One thing that is really great about Latino guys is that they know how to dance and they’re not afraid to move their hips, which in the US just doesn’t really happen! I’m so used to seeing all these really fun girls dancing for all they’re worth with their male dancing partners just looking awkward or not really doing much, that it is super refreshing to be surrounded by young boys who are clearly very much enjoying wiggling their hips and shoulders to the music and doing lots of fancy footsteps that I can’t possibly keep up with!

The next day was when we went to go pick up Paula and do our shopping for the week, and then it was back to the farm. Franci had to leave for La Paz to take care of some document-related something or other on Tuesday, so it was just me, Inez, baby Marcos and the animals for the next few days, but it was really nice and calm, too.
Anyway, I have tons of great pictures of the various plants and animals and people that make up Esperanza, so I will try to put them up on this Picassa thing. I put up a few others already but it’s a little confusing how I’m actually supposed to use it, so yeah, I don’t know if there’s a link or what but I’ll figure it out…

So now, after a grueling 26-hour bus ride that took all of yesterday and last night over bumpy, dirt roads, through small rivers and streams, and yes, even a stretch on the infamous “Death Road” of Coroico, I am back in La Paz, and trying to have a mellow day while still making good use of my time. I’m back at the apartment of my German boys, Tobias and Martine, and let me tell you that taking a hot shower today was like heaven on earth! In the jungle it was just the opposite- I looked forward to the cold water showers so much I wound up washing two or three times per day on really hot days, but here in La Paz it is totally freezing! I think I’ll only be here a couple of days, and then head to Cuzco via Lake Titicaca, since the clock is really ticking now on when I have to head back to the states. It’s hard to believe I’ve only got 3 weeks left! But I’m super excited about Mo’s baby, which is due on the 10th of May… I’m really hoping the little guy holds out until I get there on the 6th to be born, since I want to be there to help out with the birth. I keep having all these visions of a tiny pink bundle sleeping in my arms, and carrying him around in a sling and generally playing the role of aunty to a newborn- my maternal instincts have kicked in big time now that I’m closing in on 30! I’m seriously considering figuring out a way to be a foster parent when I get settled down a little more, but I’m not really sure that it’s possible right now, especially since I want to go to school. We’ll see.

Anyway, I will keep ya’ll posted from here on out, and try to get those pix up asap. I hope you are all doing great, and if you want more info about Esperanza, please check out their website at www.esperanzadelibertad.org. They can really use any help you can give and are in the process of trying to figure out how to become more self-supporting. We’re thinking maybe cacao trees, to produce organic cocoa to be sold overseas… I have to do some research, but it seems viable. In the meantime, help ‘em out if you can! The animals will thank you!

xoxo, Pike

p.s. Okay, I have no idea if this will work, but try clicking here to see some pix:
http://picasaweb.google.com/veganpike/EsperanzaDeLibertad

Esperanza de Libertad: the first week!

Hi ya´ll! Well, I know I haven´t been here for a week quite yet, but I just really quickly wanted to write a teensy update on what I´ve been doing so far.
When I first arrived last Thursday, it was incredibly hot here, so I spent the first few days trying to adapt to the heat. The bus ride from Rurre to Ixiamas took about 5hours, and I was melting in my seat the whole time. When I finally arrived, I managed to locate the hotel where Stella´s friend Franci had said to meet her (she rents a room there for when she is not on the land), and I waited about an hour until she appeared. Franci is really, really amazing! She is totally badass and is also one of the nicest, most unpretentious people I have ever met!!!
Anyway, we had to spend the first night here in town because her car was leaking oil like crazy and we couldn´t fix it in the dark, so my first glimpse of Esperanza was the next day, Friday, late in the morning. There is a family (Franci´s nephew, his wife and their adorable little boy Marcos) who lives there, so Inez (the wife) was there with little Marcos to take care of the animals while Franci was gone. Inez is also extremely cool, a super tough lady who is also a really good mom. It is hard to believe she is only 22!!!
Anyway, the animals living there right now are a fun bunch: there´s the extremely mischievious spider monkey, Preto; a tejon (kind of like a raccoon but different- you can google it) named Luchita who has an injured leg; a little turkey hen; two lodos (a kind of parrot), & two dogs. Preto and Luchita love to climb all over everything and everyone, and find it especially amusing to try to run into the kitchen/ my bedroom at every small opportunity! They also both love to be cuddled, especially the tejon, which is really fun cause her fur is soft and she is super small (she´s still a baby), and she makes these really cute chirping noises when you pet her.
My first few days there, the only long pants I had were my jeans, and it was way too hot for that, so I ended up wearing a skirt and flip flops but boy, did I pay the price in mosquito bites! Both of my ankles were so bitten up that they were completely swollen, and it is only now that they are back to normal size, though the hideous bright red spots are gonna be there for awhile, not to mention the itching. But it´s been really fun, too. The work on the farm is not easy but it´s really amazing what they´ve accomplished so far: when they started there was only grass, but now they have corn, bananas, peanuts, peppers, papayas, mango trees (babies, still not producing) and lots more being planted. Yesterday we planted 52 baby banana trees which should start producing fruit in about 8 months or so, according to the old guy down the road who sold them to us. Everyone is so sweet here- it was raining when we went to get the plants, and we hadn´t yet dug the holes yet, so in a split second he announced that he and his two sons would be coming with us to help us get the bananas planted faster. We were all completely covered in mud and it was really hard work for the next couple of hours, but it was really fun, too! Preto kept trying to destroy the new trees, which actually isn´t that hard since they are so tiny still, but we managed to salvage them alright and I think it will all turn out okay in the next few months. After the rain let up I went with the girls and Marcos (age 2 1/2) to go hunting for wild limes and chirimoya, which is maybe the same thing as a custard apple? Not sure. But it´s really, really good, enough to get both Franci and Inez way up in a tree trying to knock down the riper ones with sticks. A little scary, but fun, too!
There is also a little stream near the house, so the first day I was here we went to the stream and did laundry and generally cooled down, which was fabulous. The next day we cleared grass, which sounds like no big deal but let me tell you, it is NOT easy when you are using really basic tools and it is about 100 degrees outside!
Anyway, I need to go cause this internet is really slow and really expensive, but I will write more soon. I can´t believe that in one month from today I will be at my parents house in Utah! I can´t wait but I also don´t want to leave!
big hugs to all, pike

Going into the Jungle!

Hey everyone! This is gonna be a quick one cause I am just about to get on a boat and cross the river away from civilization for the next two weeks. I am in Rurrenabaque, Bolivia, in the tropical north part and I am on my way to Esperanza de Libertad, where I guess I will be helping them build stuff and hanging out with monkeys, or something like that! Vamos a ver. Anyway, I just wanted to say that if you don´t hear from me for a while, don´t panic, I´m probably okay, i just won´t have much access to the internet until I get back from Esperanza. I hope you guys are doing great. I wanted to put up a post about going to the Salar de Uyuni, which I did almost a week ago now, but I haven´t really gotten it together to write it. So if you´re curious, just google it and you can see what i´m talking about. It´s a really famous and beautiful place, so there should be plenty of photos and stories and stuff like that. Okay, big hugs to all! xo, Pike

Sorry to Whine, I am totally okay and all that.

Hey, so sorry if my last post was a bit melodramatic... Just for the record, that happened over a week ago and I am totally fine now. I didn't lose my main bag, just the stuff I had brought for the overnight, so even though it really sucked to lose stuff like my air mattress, my favorite skirt and shirt, glasses, sunglasses, and lots of little things that generally make my life more comfortable, I want to make it clear how grateful I am for the stuff I DIDN'T lose: my passport, my spare debit card, my computer, my camera, etc. And that I never even saw who took it. I think it would be way more traumatizing to get robbed to my face than behind my back. Even though it is far more cowardly to steal from someone who doesn't even know you're doing it. Whatever.
So yeah, don't worry about me, I'm fine, I'm in La Paz now, desperately trying to catch up on my blog updates cause I have actually been doing tons of stuff that is really interesting, which means I haven't had time to write about it! Which is kind of a good thing, right? Right.
Okay, thanks, that's all....
lots of love to you all!
xoxo p.

Trouble in Tarabuco

Sucre:

I was staying on the floor of some very nice, if sort of hippie-ish, guys I met on Couchsurfing in the lovely town of Sucre, Bolivia. Another girl, Celeste, who I had also met on Couchsurfing, told me that a friend of hers was organizing a trip to Tarabuco for the annual indigenous celebration that happens there, and if I wanted to go it would be really fun. So I said sure, why not? Sounds like a good time. At 4 the next day, we met up in town and waited for the bus to come and get us. When it eventually did come to pick us up, we realized that this was not going to be the normal 2-5 people trip that her friend, the local boyfriend of another gringa who lives in Sucre, had taken her on before. This time around the bus was packed with dozens of screaming, rambunctious teenagers, and as Celeste and I were the only gringos and also, I am certain, by far the oldest ones there, I hoped I wouldn't feel too out of place for the next few days.

As soon as the bus started its engine, the teenagers all at once lit up cigarettes and began puffing away with wild abandon, as if to assert their independence by choking us all to death with their putrid fumes. I pulled down my school-bus window and tried my best to stay in the current, despite the fact that it wasn't very warm, and shot school-marmly death looks at every underager with a cigarette in their hands. It didn't work.

Anyway, after a little less than two hours our journey was already over, and somehow I had survived, so I was happy when we all clambored off the bus and into the chilly air of Tarabuco. After a few minutes of confusion, we picked up our things and allowed ourselves to be herded down and through several winding cobblestone streets until we arrived at a rundown, nondescript building on the corner of two equally non-descript streets. Stepping through a low doorway, we were in a tiny courtyard of sorts, with doorways into other rooms to our left and in front of us, a large pile of rubble and a crumbling doorway hung with a sheet and marked "bano" to the right, and a set of steep stairs leading to another room above it all just ahead and to the left.

I was already exhausted from a poor night's sleep the night before, so I hadn't counted on staying away long when we mounted the steps and set up our things, all of us in one room, blankets and sleeping bags directly on the hardwood floor. I was looking forward to taking a stroll around the town, maybe getting a bit to eat and then heading to sleep, hopefully even finding somewhere to fill up my hot water bottle along the way so my feet wouldn't freeze in the frigid night air of the uninsulated room. Celeste and I had seen a cafe that looked promising, so after chatting for a while with some friendly boys who had offered to show us around the town, we decided to go check it out and then meet up with them later in the square.

The cafe, it turns out, did in fact have a few vegetarian items, which is something of a miracle in a Bolivian town of such a small size (only around 1,000 people live there), so we ate avocado sandwiches and drank hot tea before heading out to the main square, where all the festivities were to take place the next day.

When we arrived, the first thing Celeste showed me was the massive, impressive statue of an indigenous warrior standing over the body of a slain Spanish conquistador, his chest a gaping hole, with the warrior holding the man's heart in one hand and his mouth dripping with blood, as though he had just taken a bite. It was then that Celeste explained to me that the celebration we were there for is actually an important holiday in the local indigenous cultures because it is the commemoration of a battle in which the indigenous tribes managed to defeat the Spanish (and lead by a woman, no less!!!), and is a reminder that the people here were not willingly defeated, but fought to the death to protect their homeland and traditions.

This sounded pretty great to me, except that being a gringa, I felt a bit of awkwardness too since my very presence there was, in some ways, part of a different method of colonization, and I really didn't know how welcome we would be. In any event, we gawked at the statue a little bit longer and then decided to go get my hot water bottle so we could ask the cafe if they would fill it up for me, since we were both ready to turn in for the night. But when we arrived back at the house, we found that the door was padlocked and there was no one around to let us in. Annoyed, we looked around for the guy in charge, but he was nowhere to be found. Someone else mentioned that the door would be open again by midnight, so we would just have to hang out until then. Okay, so I wasn't happy but it wasn't the end of the world.

We went back to the square and ran into Ricky, the friendly other tour guide we had been chatting with earlier, and he took us to go buy coca leaves and showed us the traditional way to chew them; removing the spines, and carefully placing first 5 or so leaves in your mouth, then taking a tiny, tiny bite of a piece quinoa charcoal/ corn substance that, when rubbed against the leaves, releases the juice more efficiently. The thing with coca leaves is that the effect is really nothing like the highly concentrated extract that we know as cocaine- rather than a super stimulant, it has been traditionally used for thousands of years to help people deal with altitude sickness, as an analgesic (it did actually feel like a bit of novocaine had been rubbed on my gums), and as a way to physically cope with the incomprehensibly hard labor forced on the indigenous people by the Spanish conquistadors and in the mines. I tried a little for about an hour or so, but the numbness kind of just made my cavities more sensitive to the cold, and I wasn't very into the feeling of having a big wad of leaves shoved in my mouth like tobacco. But it's an experience, so I'm glad I tried it!

After hanging a while in the park, we went to the dance that everyone else was at, just around the corner from the house, and actually had a lot of fun dancing to an extremely weird mix of reggaeton, terrible latin pop, fantasy metal, and traditional Bolivian music. The scene was actually so bizarre it was funny: at first, we were just hanging out and kind of group dancing with Ricky and a couple of the boys who had been friendly to us before (they all used to work with our intrepid "leader" as tour guides for a different company). Then this extremely wasted, obnoxious American girl, "Heather", decided to come and besiege us with how excited she was to meet another American, and started aggressively provoking our new friend Ricky into... I don't know what.... saying, "oh, you know, Ricky, he is SUCH a SLUT!!!" and we were just like, "whatever dude, whatever your going for here is none of my business" but still, it took her ages to finally go away, and by that time Celeste and I had just started dancing with each other and this apparently made our new friends feel unwelcome, so they went with Heather, which was fine too. It was then, after we had tired of dancing and realized it was about midnight and decided to leave, that the 15-year-olds struck.
Innocuous enough at first, I said, "why not?" thinking it can be fun to have an innocent dance with a kid young enough to be my child, more or less.

Things are different here.

I don't know if it's just because we are gringas and maybe are generally all thought to be totally up for whatever, whenever, or if they actually expect to make out with every girl they ever dance with, but I have to say it took me the better part of an hour to actually convince this kid (this was after dancing- very, very badly on my part- for quite a long time without unsavory incident) that no, there really is no way on earth that I'm going to kiss him, and not just because I'm waaaaay older than him.
Celeste was having a similar issue with her 15-year-old, so eventually we finagled our way out of there, though not before having to physically confront a completely different guy, this one a part of our tour group, who was drunkenly trying to prevent us from leaving. It's a good thing I'm not scared to use force if I have to, though thankfully it hasn't really ever come to that. I think that as soon as someone sees that you are more than willing to put up a fight that usually is enough to make them decide that it's really not worth the effort. I grabbed his arm and shoved it out of the way, ushering the both of us out of there and back into the cold night air.
Anyway, by this time I really was tired and grouchy, and seriously not in the mood for anymore dancing, dealing with drunken strangers, or anything else but sleep. But of course, despite the fact that by now it was 2am, the door to the sleeping space remained padlocked when we arrived and no one seemed to know where our guide was at. We spent the better part of the next hour scouring every plaza, still-open bar and party-sounding place in the tiny town, without ever encountering Celeste's friend, until finally we returned to the house and found somebody who knew somebody else who had the keys. And thus, we were finally let in the house, only to realize that there were lots of people there already, they had apparently just been locked in, as we now were as well.

Even though it was freezing, I had my really fancy little air mattress and my halfway decent sleeping bag, so that combined with how exhausted I was helped me fall asleep fairly quickly. Unfortunately, I wouldn't get to enjoy it for long, since sometime 1 to 2 hours after we finally made it in, so did all the others, many of whom were still up for partying. This included the obnoxious guy who tried to block us from leaving the party, and it took a lot of restraint for me to not just totally lose it and start screaming at him, since he was flipping the lights off and on and running around the room like a demented puppy on steroids. The others were complaining as well and eventually he settled down, but by this time it was something like 5am and we didn't have long until the light came in again, waking him and all the others. Soon I was trying hard to ignore the inevitable sounds of waking that were happening all around me, determined to cling to every potential minute of sleep I could possibly muster. It was sort of working for a while until, out of nowhere, I suddenly had the sleeping bag ripped away from where I was holding it over my eyes, and the demented face of that same guy (!) started shouting at me that we had to get up! we had to get up!!! now!!! and I totally lost it.

Anyway, after repeatedly warning him to get the fuck out of my face (to the best of my ability in Spanish), the douchebag finally listened and left the room, and by that time i was so over it all that I just decided to get up anyway and try to make the best of it by getting some breakfast and tea and hopefully just getting through the day. Celeste agreed, and so we packed up our things, arranged ourselves the best we could, and then realized that there was just this big room with everyones's stuff in it, which seemed a little sketchy. Just then, though, Celeste's friend the "tour guide" finally made an appearance, still totally drunk from the night before, and assured us that after we left, they would be locking the whole place and then we could all come back and get our things at 3, when we started re-gathering to head back to Sucre.

This sounded slightly dubious but we really didn't have any other option, being, as we were, in a tiny town where we knew no one on the biggest celebration day of their year, so we shoved our things into the corner and tried to make them appear as innocuous as possible, and left.

The day itself actually went okay from that point, starting with our breakfast of hot tea, fruit smoothies, bread and jam and a traditional drink called Api, which is like an extremely sweet sort of mash of purple corn, cloves, cinnamon and who knows what else, served thick and hot in the morning. After eating, we headed for the main square, which was quickly filling up with people from all over the region, indigenous and non-indigenous alike. The sounds of drums and pipe music was in the air, and the excitement in the air was tangible.

Although the early morning air had been cold and crisp, by 10 am we were peeling off the multiple layers of clothing we were both wearing, applying lots of sunscreen to help shield us from the steadily strengthening sun. We shielded our eyes as we strained to get a better view of the dancers in the parades that were now underway, the women in their incredible sequined shawls and traditional dresses, the men in elaborate hot pink costumes as well with capes, dome-shaped form-fitting hats, knitted legwarmers and jangly spurs on the wooden sandals that were strapped to their feet, which sounded like tambourines as their feet all hit the pavement in unison.

After watching the dancers for a while and snapping some photos of the incredible statue, we wandered around the mercado, just browsing at all the different things that were on offer, everything from little old-fashioned tins of lip balm to yarn to food of all kinds to llama fetuses to bury under the foundation of your house, a tradition that is thought to bring luck by appeasing the appetite of Pachamama, the earth mother goddess, from whom the native people believe they are directly descended. For her as well it is customary to tip 3 drops of any alcoholic drink to the soil before taking a drink, to prove that in everything you have remembered from whence your sustenance comes, something I learned from our mine guide at Potosi. But I digress.

After the markets, we ran into a friend of Celeste's who informed us that our other friends from Sucre (the ones I'd been staying with) were all going to meet up in an hour or so on the main field, which normally is used for football games but today had been transformed into a massive dance-off arena with a huge pole in the middle adorned with brilliantly colored ribbons and flowers and laden with all kinds of food and drinks- we surmised that this was to be the prize for the best group of dancers, since Celeste had seen a similar custom at Carnival. We didn't find our friends, but we did eventually find some shade and hid out there, eating soggy, greasy french fries until we were feeling cold again and ventured back out into the sun. Eventually we did locate our crew, and we all went to a little place with a patio and sat around, enjoying the beer (shared, the brazilian way, from a large bottle amongst many people, served in small glasses) and having a lovely time just chatting and hanging out, something of a refuge from the chaos all around us outside.

By this time it was nearly two, and Celeste and I wanted to try to get one more little bite to eat from the friendly cafe before it was time to recollect our things. So we said our goodbyes, since the others would not be coming back on the bus with us, and went to eat and chill before the journey back, and it was as I was getting ready to pay the bill that I realized that, somehow in all the chaos (and most certainly in the crush of the crowded streets), my little billfold with my cash, driver's license, credit and debit card had disappeared.

I was in a bit of disbelief at first, not understanding how this could have happened, but really, it is obvious enough: I was wearing my little "punk pouch", sort of a fanny pack that Ju in Rio had given me, and since it is not directly attached to my body and since the main compartment is located on one side of my butt, it is not brain surgery to figure out that actually I had made myself an easy target by storing my wallet there while walking through pressing crowds of people.

So although I was upset, I wasn't going to freak out about it. I lost about 50 bolivianos, which is equal to something like $7, and my cards were both replaceable. So, finally accepting my fate, we turned and went back to the house to get our things and get out of there. I was ready to leave.

When we showed up at the doorway it was open, so we walked into the courtyard, up the stairs, and into the room, giving it a second for our eyes to adjust to the darkness before we could accept what was before us there: that being, exactly, nothing. No people, no stuff, just a blank room with another door leading into another room, from which we could hear voices. I opened the door, and there, to my left, were three people, fully dressed, just hanging out on a bed and looking annoyed at my intrusion. I asked about the stuff, and all they said was, "the guys came and took it all". "What guys?". "I don't know. Just a bunch of people were here and they came and got everything." Celeste and I exchanged looks and asked a few more questions about whether they had seen our things specifically, etc, but those people were really not helpful; they suggested we find our friend since it was probably him that had come and grabbed our things.

So once again, we set out in search of this "tour guide", and once again who we found instead was Ricky, who quickly explained the situation to his other friends, and attempted to reassure us that it was likely that Celeste's friend had grabbed our things and was hanging onto them somewhere.

So we waited, putting out the word that we were on the lookout for flaky space-case tour guide boy. Less than 10 minutes later, there he was, trotting over to us with- wait! Is that our stuff?! For a moment I felt a rush of relief, until I noticed that while he did have both of our sleeping bags and Celeste's bag, my brown one was still absent. So I uneasily enquired about it, and he looked back at me blankly, as if I were testing him and he wasn't sure what to say. I asked again- "y mi bolsa? De tela, y color cafe? No tienes?" He shifted uncomfortably and admitted that he hadn't seen it, let alone grabbed it, and was I sure it was there with the other stuff? At this I began to lose my patience, since being robbed once in a day is typically more than enough for most people. So I wearily traipsed back to the house with him, having to actually remind him where it was since he was STILL far too hammered to even walk straight, let alone give me much confidence that he was going to track down my stuff. Obviously, nothing had changed in the 25 minutes since I had last visited the house, so we returned to the square, me angry and dejected and him beginning to fret and feel awkward and guilty. He left me in the center with Celeste and a bunch of others while he and a friend supposedly went to double check wherever they had left our things before and the waiting bus, which kind of gave me a shred of hope for a minute, but eventually came back with the same news: no sign of my bag. At this point I was so tired and overwhelmed that everything felt a little surreal, from the people playing guitar and singing all around me to Celeste and some random kid giving me a neck and head massage to help me "chill out", to the obnoxious, evil hippie who had tried to rope me into buying some stupid feather earring he had made for me despite my already having told him I was just robbed and had no money. When I repeated this to him at the end of his little schtick, he became angry and said I didn't have to lie, at which point I actually sort of yelled at him, which isn't something I really do much in real life, despite how often I want to! But he was such a creep, I seriously could not believe his audacity and really had no qualms about asserting myself there, either.

Anyway, after an hour or so of the "tour guide" dude coming and going, fretting and fawning and not really knowing what to do, we really had to go cause the bus driver was, understandably, getting impatient, and I just wanted it all to be over with.
The final blow came when I got on the bus and asked the girl who was sitting there whether she had seen anything. I described the bag, and she calmly replied, "si, claro, esta arriba" (yes, of course, it's on top of the bus). "Estas seguro?!" I asked excitedly, (are you sure?!), and clambored up the ladder to the top of the bus, only to find a massive completely different backpack from the relatively small bag I was searching for, which turned out to belong to our fearless leader, Wasted Tour Guide Dude (WTGD). I was so unhappy it was unbelievable.

As everyone was getting back on the bus, WTGD proclaimed that he, nobly, would not be returning with us, but instead would be staying in the town with me (!) to continue the search for the missing bag. I explained that if it wasn't in all the places he looked before, and if he really had genuinely searched for it, then the bag was stolen, not misplaced, meaning that it was on its way to another town in another vehicle at that moment and there is no way we were going to find it anyway, which is true. He seemed relieved that I didn't want to stay and keep wandering around looking for it, and once we were on the bus (which was too crowded for everyone to have a seat), he promptly lay down at an incredibly awkward angle and passed out in the steps of the bus until he had to be literally slapped awake by his sister and girlfriend and dragged off the bus upon our arrival back in Sucre. So much for getting my money back. I hope to God this guy doesn't actually go through with his plans to become a tour guide for real (I learned from Celeste that his brilliant name for this future business is to be "Fucking Tours", a name from which it is apparently difficult to dissuade him from. I rest my case).

Anyway, by the time we were back in Sucre I didn't have it in me to deal with the card cancellation drama, and being as it was a Sunday night in a relatively small place I figured it probably didn't matter anyway, since there wasn't really anywhere to use them. So instead I went back to the empty house, took a long, hot shower, and fell asleep, grateful that at the very least, I still had my ipod and computer so I could listen to some soothing music until I fell asleep.

Mines of Potosi, Bolivia

History is a strange and brutal thing, as anyone who knows anything about life here on earth can attest. After reading several books related to the Spanish conquest of Latin America, I was already well aware of the fact that without the enslavement and forced labor of millions of indigenous Latin Americans from the 1400's on, the history of the world as we know it would have been completely different. This is because if it were not for the millions of tons of gold and silver, along with other metals, that were extracted by the Natives and then shipped to Europe, the entire European economy of the last 500+ years would never have been possible. In fact, if even a small percentage of the precious metals pulled from these lands had been extracted but only in the hands of local people, I dare to speculate that South America, not Europe, could easily have become the world superpower that is now Europe (and the U.S).
That said, I was also aware that the vast majority of the wealth of the Spanish empire was taken from Potosi, here in Bolivia, so there was no way I was going to not go and see this place when I had the chance. It is so crazy to think about it, how important it is, but even more, how tragic the fallout has been for the estimated eight million people who have lost their lives working in these mines.
Anyway, there are loads of tour operators in the town of Potosi, and I couldn't really tell the difference between any of them, so I just picked the one that gave me a deal with my bus ticket out. Luckily for me, the guide was really great. I have never particularly relished the idea of challenging my claustrophobia and good sense by climbing into an extremely dark, cramped, and toxic mine, but I felt like if millions of others have done it then I should at the very least understand what that experience is like. I went with a group of about 12 other people, but we were split into 2 groups when we got to the mines, after suiting up in waterproof galoshes & rain gear, along with hardhats equipped with industrial headlamps.
Only about 10 minutes after pulling away from the town, we arrived at the mouth of the mine, one of thousands riddling the mountains all around the region. Following our leader, an ex-miner himself, we trudged through muddy water into the blackness, where our headlamps illuminated what I recalled to be asbestos crystallized all over the damp walls of the cave, according to the Canadians I had had breakfast with that morning. I tried not to think about it. For awhile I put my scarf over my face to serve as a sort of filter, but you know how when you try to do something and end up doing the opposite? Well, in this case, I kept trying to breathe as slowly as possible but the suffocating atmosphere and fumes made me breathe all the more deeply, inhaling what I've read are dozens of different toxic materials far into my poor, already put-upon lungs (the exhaust fumes down here are sure to have already taken a few years off my life, not to mention the second-hand smoke).
Anyways, almost immediately after we entered, we were quickly advised to get off the main track and all flattened ourselves against the side of the cave walls as two men pushing a trolley full of broken rocks came barreling down the track. Our guide explained that although the cart alone weighs 500 kilos and the rock load 1000, these guys have the "easier" job here in the mines and therefore make less, though still considerably more than the average for Bolivia. For the record, those guys earn somewhere between 2-3000 bolivianos (about $275 US) per month for about 6 hours of work per day; compared to the average minimum wage of 550 bolivianos ($60 US), these guys have it good here. Of course, there's a massive trade off: the average life expectancy for a miner is around 45, and every year between 45 and 60 miners die in accidents- somewhere around 1 per week. The "dangerous" jobs, on the other hand, pay really well:between 5-6,000 bolivianos per month for just 2 to 3 hours per day of work. But these are the guys who are lifting 1500 kg drills and making holes in the cave walls, which will then be stuffed full of dynamite and lit by hand, in order to obtain the chunks of rock that will then be hauled out of the cave and isolated into lead, silver, tin, and zinc. We got to see all of these processes in action, including one stint where we climbed up eight consecutive ladders, all made of ancient, mud-caked wood, many with rungs broken, until we were 50 meters above where we had started, to watch the men put dynamite in the holes. Less than 5 minutes after we had made it back down, we felt the entire mountain shaking with the blasts of the dynamite they had just set off, and I couldn't help envisioning the entire roof caving in on top of us and becoming a tragic statistic in the course of a few minutes. It's not hard to see why they don't really offer "mine tours" in the U.S. Ha ha.
Anyway, we were in there for a total of around 2 1/2 hours, and during that time our guide introduced us to many of the men who worked there, as he handed out the "gifts" we had collectively purchased for them ahead of time: coca leaves, bottles of 96% pure grain alcohol (the label claims it's "comestible")and cheap soda to mix it with, work gloves (which many of the men didn't have an accepted gratefully) and unfiltered cigarettes, not just for the miners but also for The Tio ("Uncle"), or the Devil statue who is believed to be the protector of the miners. We went and visited this bizarre statue, which was still decorated from Carnival with bright paper streamers. All over and around him were strewn cigarettes, coca leaves, confetti and notes of scribbled names and words- a perfect example of how the indigenous people here have, much like the folks in Mexico and Guatemala, integrated their native spiritual beliefs in a seemingly incompatible juxtaposition with the intense Catholicism that is all-pervasive here. Shortly after our visit with the Tio, it was time to go, and I had a long chat with a man who was waiting for his ride as we were waiting for the other group to emerge. This man told me he has worked in the mines for 10 years, and that although he doesn't like it, he has 8 children and this is essentially the only work he could possibly find in this region that would allow him to support a family of that size. I had no idea what to say to him. What could I say? So I asked him about his kids, and learned that the oldest, who is 17, is preparing to go to college and that, at the very least, seemed to make his father feel like maybe his struggles were worth it. This man has literally traded in his life to improve those of his children, as I'm sure he is well aware that he will not live long having been doing this work for such a long time. It was intense. After an awkward goodbye, we were off, us French- Japanese- American- British lucky bastards, piling into the van, each of us undoubtedly feeling humbled and grateful that we would never have to live like that. But sad, too.
The thing that is weird to me is that even though the mines are now cooperatively owned by the miners themselves, there are still very few health or safety precautions in place, and it's not because they don't know the risks. They know all too well what they are doing to their bodies, what they are trading in for that money. I don't know. I hope that someday their work will be less dangerous, that they can find a way to make it a little less deadly to try to make a living. In the meantime, I will continue to try to figure out how I can possibly make this world a more just place, so perhaps in the future, being born in this part of Bolivia doesn't mean your choices are either dire poverty or an early death.