This party’s getting long…

Today’s the last day of Carnaval. Thank Pachamama. If Carnaval lasted much longer than this, I have a feeling people would soon be throwing rocks in place of water balloons. I’ve given up on wearing my rain jacket and hood – it’s too hot out there. I've tried a new technique of retaliation. My friends and I have stocked up on cans of espuma and keep ourselves armed. This warfare has turned dangerous (already a few Cochabambino eyes lost). Gangs have graduated from the plazas and now prowl the city in the backs of trucks, not lobbing, but heaving balloons at anyone they see. If only baseball was a sport here...

So I’m starting to realize what Ismael meant when he said everything here contains the best and the worst of Bolivia all at once. The markets smell like decaying meat and fresh flowers. You’ll get jumped in a gated community and offered lemonade in a slum. And there’s little boundary between rich and poor – all go to the same market, drink the same beer, eat the same foods (though some eat more meat than most can afford), ride the same trufis and busses – and it seems that all live in the same neighborhoods. It’s not uncommon to see a concrete apartment building, gutted and crumbling (but still intact enough to house a family) beside a beautiful three-story, one-family house. The house I see from my bedroom window looks like a miniature monastery - yellow stucco with a tiled roof and a citrus garden surrounding the patio. The apartment building beyond it is six stories and crumbling.

But the fact that bankers and beggars walk the same streets doesn’t shrink the economic disparity. The gap is just more visible. The rich know how the poor live, and the poor know the same about the rich. The poorest of Cochabamba generally come from el campo, the Andean foothills that surround the city. Most who move to the city are Aymaran or Quechuan women; they set up their carts on the street corners, selling brazil nuts, puffed rice and roasted lima beans (usually to gringos like us who are in constant search of something that’s not meat or potatoes).

Other camposinas come to work as empleadas for the middle and upperclass families of Cochabamba. Empleadas are live-in maids – most of my friend’s host families have one. They keep the house clean, wash clothing, cook meals, and in return, they’re paid a few dollars a month and given food and a bed. From what I’ve seen, some are treated like slaves, others like family members. My family’s empleada (whom they refer to fondly as Empi) has been part of the family for years, her mother having worked for my mother’s family more than 30 years ago when they lived in Sucre. Unlike other women in this line of work, Empi is allowed to participate in conversation, watch TV with the kids, and go on family excursions. But she doesn’t eat with us. She waits behind the counter to refill my glass or take my plate when I’ve finished.

On Friday, the family was out for most of the day, so I had two meals alone with Empi. I love to talk with her – she laughs after everything she says, listing my host brother’s guapos amigos who she thinks I should meet and telling stories about her own family. She’s from an indigenous community in the northeast of the country, along the border of Brazil. Her father died when she as little, leaving her mother to raise Empi’s 26 brothers and sisters, 23 of which were brothers. She says her mother is the strongest person she knows. No kidding.

I love my family, though they’re quite a bit more western than I expected. We live in very nice house in the northwest of Cochabamba, and my bedroom window looks north to the mountains. Every morning my brother (he’s 24) takes me to the city center, since my classes are just a block away from the bank where he works. My 20-year-old sister also lives at home (kids in Bolivia don’t move out of the house until they’re married), and she’s studying at the local Catholic university to be a journalist. She never seems to go to class, so she’s around a lot, but she’s always a lot of fun to hang out with.

My host father and mother are as loving as ever – Lilliana takes me on walks through the neighborhood or the city market, and Jorge will spend hours with me at the lunch table, discussing politics and global warming. Coincidentally he’s one of Bolivia’s experts in environmental issues and indigenous affairs, and he’s always wanting to tell me the latest stories of floods in the north and land rights conflicts in the east.

Life is still fast paced – I feel like I’m just starting to realize I’m here. I was in a club on Friday night when Like a Prayer came on. Everyone knew the words, everyone’s shirt stayed on, and my first thought was, “yes, this is definitely not Vermont.”

Más agua…

It’s Monday and a national holiday in Bolivia – a pardon from the government to get wet, get drunk, and sin for the sake of Pachamama, Earth Mother. The party my sister took me to began at noon and lasted eight hours. The moment I arrived I was doused in a bucket of water and sprayed with foam, looking whiter than I already was. The host family had ordered a water truck – they shut down the street, backed the truck up to the house, and placed a bathtub beneath the spout. One grandfather wandered the party with a red bucket, drenching those distracted by conversation or hiding away from the mayhem. By four, the street was a river, and by five, the grandfather was lying in the gutter as women in tight, wet jeans danced around him, kicking waves over his body. One woman grabbed my hand, and I found myself spinning circles to reggaetone. By six the truck ran dry, the neighborhood sobered (momentarily), and a friend of my sister’s took me to the patio for a lesson in salsa dancing. People love to dance here, though with the exception of my brother, very few of the guys I’ve met will admit to loving reggaeton - I offended my sister’s novio today when I told him I didn’t like Metalica.

Cochabamba on three hours of sleep…

Four days ago I departed slushy Troy for Miami, spent ten hours in the airport eating almonds and contemplating palm trees, flew the night to Cochabamba, Bolivia where our program directors (one with freckles and the other with extensive tattoos) herded us onto a bus, sat in a hotel conference room taking notes on 101 ways I might die this semester, lost myself and my friend in the city center, flagged a taxi but forgot how to argue the charge, wandered the Cochabamba bars in a pack of gringos, got pelted with water balloons, rode a bus to Oruro over the mountains, found myself in a crowd of 400,000 drunk Bolivians, watched a parade for 38 hours, followed the dancers until (almost) dawn, ate saltenas for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, boarded a bus back to Cochabamba but forgot to sleep, ate more beef than I’ve eaten in my life, and to end this run-on sentence, found an internet café so I could write it all down before I fall into a deep sleep and forget what I’ve done in these four, awake days.

So I’ve arrived and am in a daze. But having never lived in a third world country (nor a city, for that matter), I’m happily out of my comfort zone. It feels good to be shaken. From the little I’ve seen of Cochabamba, I’m in love with this city. There’s no order to traffic – you could pass a car to the right or the left, and it makes no difference. Vendors line the sidewalks, and the plazas are packed with protesters and dancers. It’s warm here and generally dry with the exception of the occasional water bucket dumped on your head from an apartment above.

The country is in the midst of a very long party – Carnaval in Oruro this past weekend and here in Cochabamba next weekend. This week I´ve had to avoid the city plazas, where gangs of kids like to stand waiting at the entrances, armed with water balloons, super soakers and cans of "espuma" - soapy foam that they spray like whipped cream at unguarded passerbyes. It´s actually hilarious to watch - Bolivians take "water wars" to a whole new level. You´ll see mom´s sitting in cars, pumping up super soakers and handing them to their toddlers in the front seats. Unfortunately my hair has made me a magnet for water balloons and machismo – I find myself dodging projectiles by day and comments like, “You. Me. Not work why?” by night.

I spent the last two nights in the city of Oruro, just about 5 hours west of Cochabamba. Oruro is the traditional host for Bolivian Carnaval - Ishmael (my program director) explained it well - he said Oruro Carnaval takes the best and the worst of all of Bolivia and condenses it into one weekend and one 10 mile street. I´ve never seen Mardi Gras, but I have a feeling there´s no competition in size and energy. The central event of Carnaval is a parade that lasts five days straight, 8 a.m. to 5 a.m., with three hours in between for the bolivians to sober up and start over again. The street the marchers take is nearly 10 kms long, lined with bleachers where thousands of onlookers stand to watch, dance, and lob baloons at innocent victims during breaks in the parade. The costumes are more colorful and elaborate than any I´ve ever seen - they must cost nearly an entire year´s salary for an average boliviano, and each participant buys a new costume each year. I´m not sure where they come from or how the bolivianos pay for them, but Carnaval is such a foundational part of the culture here that perhaps these costumes are the most important annual investment.

I spent last night following the dancers to the end of the parade route, where thousands gathered to watch the alba, or the sunrise ceremony. And now I´m writing on three hours of sleep, having to greet my family for the first time tonight.