You know you're in Bolivia when you're walking by a Mexican restaurant in the heart of the city with loud pop-rock blaring and a ton of Mennonites in their traditional garb are getting off a bus to go eat inside. We saw that as we walked on our way to a nice restaurant called Los Lomitos. Yoli has told me before that Mennonites love Mexican food, and it's true... almost every time we walk by a Mexican restaurant, there's at least one inside.
For a norteamericano this is just one of many surprising realities of Bolivia that seem funny and captivating.
Earlier in the day we had invited Yoli's family for a birthday celebration slash goodbye party. We invited everyone but expected some wouldn't make it. But everyone did -- with ALL their kids.
Yoli had tried to talk her sisters into making sandwiches or pizza, which would have been easier and less messy. But they wouldn't have any of that ... they wanted to eat beef ribs with rice and potatoes and salad.
They arrived over the course of an hour or so, and before we knew it, the whole place was packed. We had at least 20 family members. Plus another family that was staying in the home (7) and the housekeepers (3) made for a grand total of 30 people.
It was a Bolivian family affair at its boisterous best. There was loud conversation, kids running and screaming and playing and upsetting one another, food cooking, and people scooting to and fro with plates of food or piles of photos.
There wasn't enough table space for everyone, so we had to eat in rounds. And since it was a birthday party, we had a nice loud rendition of "cumpleaņos feliz."
I got lots of stuff on tape, so hopefully we can make a nice video from it.
Thankfully there were no family feuds and everyone seemed to leave satisfied. And, in true Bolivian fashion, folks stuck around about twice as long as we expected them to. A planned two-hour event stretched past four hours.
There was only one casualty -- a baby rattle belonging to one of the other families. I consider myself blessed. With all the kids running around, the damage could have been a LOT worse.
After saying goodbye to the family, I breathed a sigh of relief. For me, this marked the end of intense concentration on Spanish. My Spanish improves each time I come down, but I still have to work hard to understand, and it really is taxing. It felt good knowing I could relax and stick to mostly English for the rest of the trip. But at the same time, it's sad that we won't see any of the family until next year.
Yoli and I did a lot more walking, some of it errands. We went back to El Jordan and watched as construction continued. I am still amazed by the new building. It's four stories tall and when it's finished, a lot of cool stuff is going to happen there.
We finished the evening at the aforementioned Los Lomitos. We ate "milaneza de pechuga de totaqui," essentially breaded croquets of a wild bird. It was pretty good. We also had an appetizer of chorizo (wonderful sausage) and had a nice amaretto ice cream covered in crushed almonds for dessert.
All that's left is to take some showers tonight to cool down from the muggy heat, finish packing, and get some sleep. Tomorrow we're flying all day to get back home.
The Palmasola Prison has little of a prison. It's more of a little town.
I guess Josh already talked about our troubles trying to get in to the prison on Thursday. We had been in the line at 2:40 p.m. The closing time to let people in was 3 p.m., but they let us in at 4, so we had to pay. When I finally was able to get in, they wanted me to pay 5 Bs. I was so angry that they didn't let Josh in and about standing in the line so long with my crying baby, that I yelled at the policeman, and he let me in without paying. (This was the first time I ever yelled at a policeman).
There was a second check point that also asked for 5 Bs. I asked why I had to pay, and they said because it was after 3 p.m.
One of the policeman was trying to make a big deal because I showed my passport instead of my national ID. He said that passport was for foreigners. He ended up letting me in. It helped that Jadzia was crying loud. A woman checked me looking for contraband, and Jadzia's diaper too. However, she didn't bother to check my diaper bag. What kind of checking is that?
When I got through the gates, there were no police inside. There were only prisoners. Some of them offered to help me find the person I was going to visit (for a price, of course). Since my friend in jail was expecting me, I knew he would be waiting. But I didn't see him. I'm sure Josh would have freaked out had he seen his wife looking lost, surrounded by so many inmates.
It had been about 3 years since I last saw my friend. I looked around and finally found him. He appeared different than the other inmates. He was very peaceful. He wasn't looking for me. He thought it would be easier to spot Josh, a tall blond gringo, than a short dark Bolivian, like almost all the women visiting there. When he saw me without Josh, he was sad and worried about him, and upset for all the burrocracy to get in (burro = donkey).
Then he took me to his place. Along the way, I saw a chicken restaurant, a church, many houses, a soccer game. Everything was crowded. The inmates try to use every inch of space they can. They pretty much live on their own there.
My friend bought a Coke for me next door. It was the coldest Coke I drank since I came to Santa Cruz. We talked for a while and caught up. I noticed he had a sewing machine for leather work. He was very hopeful that this year he will be released.
The visit seemed so short, but I was two hours there. I hope next time I see him, he will meet Josh and he will be a free man. He was also very delighted with Jadzia, and played with her for a while.
You would think that getting inside Palmasola was hard. Well, getting out was, too. When I reached the exit gate, they turned me back to another check point because I was missing a stamp (as if I didn't have enough on my arm already). I ended up getting the stamp, but they didn't check me at all.
The last few days we've been spending most of our time visiting friends and family and taking care of various errands. We've really been packing a lot into our time here, but we haven't been able to do everything we wanted. We had been talking about visiting a nearby city, Cotoca, which is renowned for its handicrafts. They have a large market on Sunday where you can buy all sorts of beautiful textiles, pottery, and much more. There have been political problems there, though. The people are riled up over an issue involving the mayor and many of our friends suggested it wasnīt safe to go. We ended up not having enough time Sunday, anyway. So, that's another thing we'll save for the next trip. We may still try to buy a hammock while we are here, but right now I'm leaning toward putting that off until the next trip, too.
Today (Tuesday) we will hold a birthday party for one of Yoli's sisters, which will also double as a goodbye party for us. We're hoping to get the entire family together, which is no small feat since they currently live spread out all over the area. I'm not sure if all the grandchildren will be there or not. If they are, it will be a crazy time.
Tonight we hope to go out to a nice restaurant and enjoy some Bolivian cuisine. It should be a pleasant way to wrap up the trip.
On Friday we drove out to Casa Hogar Nacer. It's a home in the country for boys who have been living on the streets of Santa Cruz. It is simply one of the most amazing places ever, and each time we visit I come away amazed.
There are usually around 60 to 70 boys at the home at any given time. They are free to come and go. In fact, Miguel (the founder of the home) never goes out and invites boys to come... The word simply spreads on the street and curious boys come on their own.
There are many amazing things at Hogar Nacer. The most amazing of all are the lives changed. At Hogar Nacer these boys leave behind lives of addiction, stealing, sickness, and other problems. Instead they learn responsibility, they get an education, they eat healthy, and they have a big "family" that loves them.
Equally amazing is the setting in which all this happens. As I said before, Hogar Nacer is in the country, connected to Santa Cruz by highway. So many of the city's temptations are out of easy reach. When the home began, it was mostly an empty piece of land. Today it is replete with beautiful gardens, shady huts, orange groves, soccer fields, and much more. The boys did almost all the construction and planting work themselves.
St. Louis has a magnificent Botanical Garden. The Santa Cruz Jardin Botanico is not even close to matching it. But when I'm at Casa Hogar Nacer, I feel like they have made it into something almost as beautiful as the garden in St. Louis.
We spent a good deal of time going from place to place around Hogar Nacer filming and snapping photos of the boys as they worked and played and ate. When we get back to St. Louis, we'll try to edit together a short video that gives a better perspective of what the place looks like than I can describe here in words. We also plan to update the Hogar Nacer website with information about 3 other homes that Miguel is now operating.
Among the improvements we saw there: the library is now finished and open. It has a small supply of books (they would welcome donations of more), a computer lab, and an open space for desks. They are currently using the open space to give musical instrument lessons. We also saw that the pig farm has expanded from the 3 pigs we saw last year to nearly 40 this year. They sell the meat from the pigs as a source of income for the home (and of course caring for the pigs provides responsibilities for several boys). The tilapia pools also seemed larger than the ones we saw last year, though they are wrestling with some problems in properly aerating them. The dentist/doctor's office has moved from a modular trailer into another building on the campus. They still don't have a "true" dentist's chair (they make do with a folding patio-style chair), but it appears they have all the other equipment they need.
Also, we did take some video of traffic along the way... We hope to do some filming on a bus before we come back. If we're lucky the footage we get will let us make a fun short video about travel in Santa Cruz.
Yoli has been hoping to take me to jail for a long time.
It's not what it sounds like. This penitentiary is like a city surrounded by a giant brick wall. Prisoners literally have their own houses, stores, even restaurants. Maximum security is different. Prisoners are kept in cells ... but they have the keys and can lock themselves in or out.
Totally different from what we know in the states. It would be eye-opening. I was very interested in going there. We decided to go and visit a friend named Marco who is incarcerated there.
We took two buses to get to 'El Carcel' (the jail) in Palma Sola. It was about 30 minutes outside the city in a somewhat rural area. When we arrived, it was the typical Bolivian scene: a long line of people waiting to get in flanked by a half dozen vendors hawking various foods and drinks to the impatient people.
The way jail works is this: It's open to visitors two days a week. Visitors can enter the jail from around 9 a.m. until 3 p.m. and they can exit from 3 to 6 p.m. We arrived around 2:40. There was one long line for women into a small door. There was a big giant door for men and trucks. There were hardly any men.
I had Jadzia in the baby carrier and knocked on the big door and got inside almost immediately. I went to the guard station for men and showed my passport and Jadzia's. The guard approved me and logged all my info (except he wrote my name as "Joshua Michael" instead of "Joshua Renaud," misunderstanding my passport). Then they wrote a code number on my forearm with a magic marker and stamped it.
The next step was for me to walk about a third of a mile to the next guard station where I would be checked again for contraband, etc. Since the women's line was very long, Yoli still hadn't made it inside the jail. The problem is I didn't have much confidence in my ability to communicate, and I wanted to wait for Yoli anyway so we could go in together and meet Marco.
I asked the guard where I should stand to wait for her. I told him she was still outside in line. So they opened up the door and pointed me back out.
I ended up rejoining Yoli in the women's line. The line didn't move for almost an hour. People were very angry, pounding on the door, yelling, demanding to be let in. On the other side a welder was welding something. Other people grumbled that the guards were going to make them pay to get in since it was after 3 p.m. Some people tried to skip the line by swarming in front of the giant door. Occasionally visitors who had gotten into jail earlier would come out. They were immediately swarmed by children who wanted to be paid to wash the numbers off the visitors' forearms. Jadzia got restless and we had to change her diaper. It was not fun.
We made it to the front of the line and finally the door opened and we got in. Yoli started to go to her line (which was very long) and I moved toward the empty men's line. I greeted the same inspector who had checked me in the first time and reminded him he had already seen me. Then someone else said I couldn't go in and somebody else said I wasn't wearing pants.
It was true. I was wearing shorts. In fact, they were the blue and red plaid shorts that look somewhat goofy. A guard insisted it was against the rules for me to go into jail without wearing long pants. This seemed crazy to me, and I had not heard of it prior to our trip. A woman in the women's line suggested I go outside and find someone who would rent me a pair of pants. Apparently this happens often. Bolivians are nothing if not entrepreneurial. Everything was happening fast and people were talking a mile a minute. The guards had the door open and were waving me out. My patience and Spanish were being tested. Frustrated (and not wanting to rent pants), I just gave the baby to Yoli and told her I would go outside and just wait for them.
So I did. I waited. And waited. And waited. Meanwhile Jadzia and Yoli had a nice visit with Marco (though they had to pay 5 Bs at the second guard station to continue going in).
I wish I could give some amazing and enlightening descriptions of what the inside of a Bolivian jail is like, but I can't. I'll have to enlist Yoli's help tomorrow for that.
Instead, here are some of the things I observed: merchants selling their stuff near the jail, the never-ending parade of buses and taxis trying to pick up passengers, and the kids constantly mobbing visitors as they left the jail. The kids also tried to play games with the guards by jumping into jail just before they closed the big door when letting in a vehicle.
The scene around the jail was interesting. Tall, unkempt grass; trash everywhere; water running through the trash; kids playing barefoot in said water; and a food stand that advertised its "nerve soup" (a euphemism for a soup made of a bull's penis).
Here are some other things that wandered past while I sat in the sand under the shade of a blue tarp:
* 3 roosters, pecking at trash
* A mare and a foal, also rooting through trash
* Two pigs
* More stray dogs than I could count
* A boy who peed against the side of the jail
* A man who did the same thing about 20 minutes later
* Another man who peed in the sand by the "nerve soup" place
All in all, it was a long afternoon. Now I'm off home to enjoy some rest.
Tomorrow we'll be heading to Casa Hogar Nacer to visit Miguel and the kids. We hope to shoot some video there, too, which we'll post here once we are back in the U.S.
When I first came to Bolivia, my wife was a volunteer at El Jordan, a center of support for street kids. It's a place where street kids can learn practical skills to make an honest living and get off the street. It's an amazing place that is changing lives.
On Wedneday we got to see a long-time project that is finally coming to fruition. Dubbed "Jericho," it's an expansion onto the next door property.
Yoli and got to visit the construction site. It was amazing. The frame of the 4-story building is mostly finished. What remains is to cover all the walls with cement and do all the finishing work. We crawled all over it, even standing on the open fourth floor and enjoying a spectacular view of the city.
Yoli shot a bunch of video and when we get back to the states we will edit it and post it here on the website. It's interesting to see the standard construction technique there compared with the ways we do things here. Almost all buildings there are built of hollow bricks and covered with cement.
In any case, the progress has wowed us and it's exciting to think how El Jordan will be able to expand its ministry once the new building opens its doors.
The weather here has been nothing short of wonderful, though in the past few days it has begun to warm up a bit. We've had rain most days, though today we had some torrents. In fact, as I type this, it is thundering and pouring pretty hard. Iīm probably going to be soaked walking back to Yoli's sister's house.
Monday we visited the mission for their weekly prayer meeting. The usual format is that the groups sings several hymns, then one of the missionaries shares a short devotion, and then the group shares prayer requests and breaks up into smaller groups for prayer. On this occasion, I was asked to speak.
I wasn't sure I'd have something of significance to say, but I was inspired and came up with something. Everybody seemed receptive, so I was happy how it turned out. Many of our mission friends took turns doting on Jadzia and talking with Yoli and I. It was a lot of fun.
But there was one problem. Some of you may recall that last year in the process of trying to help El Jordan with their computers, I fried one of the computers by accident. Well, in preparation for the prayer meeting, Yoli and a volunteer from El Jordan were making lemonade. The way they do it is by blending a bunch of lemons (with the peel) with water and sugar, then straining it into a pitcher. The result is the best tasting lemonade you've ever had. But somehow, the blender burned out. They had cut the lemons into small pieces and it seemd to be working fine. No high pitched whines or anything. Suddenly they smelled smoked, and it was finished. Unlike last year's computer incident, I don't think this was a case of plugging a 110-volt device into a 220-volt outlet. I'm not sure what happened.
Today we went to Santa Cruz's newest movie theater. It's pretty impressive, even by American standards. Totally air conditioned, stadium seating and everything. What makes it a bit different are a series of stores and kiosks selling things like jewlery and cell phones, making it like a movie theater with a tiny mall attached. Also, there are quite a few armed guards roaming the premises. We saw Narnia (with Spanish subtitles) and were pleased with it. It stayed fairly close to the book, which Yoli and I both read for the first time earlier this year.
After the movie, we went to a fancy ice cream restaurant where Yoli's youngest sister has gotten a job. It was her first night, and she seemed somewhat overwhelmed. I remember my first night working at Tornatore's in Bridgeton and the learning curve associated with working in fine dining. In Bolivia, unlike the U.S., tipping is very rare. Many folks can't afford it, but there is also the practical matter that money left unattended on a table will probably be stolen shortly after it is placed there. Most restaurants don't have a host, so patrons seat themselves. Anyway, the place was packed and very busy. It was open to the outside, and since it was in the city's center, there was lots of activity outside as well. But the ice cream was heavenly.
One other nice thing about today -- we got to leave Jadzia with Yoli's mom, making this the first afternoon we were together without the baby in quite a while.
Speaking of the baby, she is probably finished nursing now, so I need to get back.
Stay tuned! In the coming days, we'll be visiting Casa Hogar Nacer, checking up on the progress of El Jordanīs new construction, and also visiting a city east of Santa Cruz where you can buy all sorts of beautiful crafts.
Yesterday Evo was sworn in as Bolivia's 66th president. We saw much of the ceremony on the TV of Alcides and Noemi from their house in Plan Tres Mil, a city close to Santa Cruz. Wow, Bolivian politicians can talk. The new vice president spoke forever, followed by Evo, then other dignitaries. Then they all spoke AGAIN. It dragged on for hours and hours, all covered by live TV.
In any case, this is a momentous event in Bolivia's political history. I am bringing back some newspapers documenting the occasion.
Meanwhile, all the internet cafes we've used so far have AWFUL keyboards. I have to reype words 5 or 6 times because the keys don't work. I hope we find a good one soon.
Jadzia is doing well... but everyone we meet says she should be wearing socks or pants and that she must be cold. In fact, she gets hot and her face flushes sometimes! :)
We brought a bunch of DVDs to watch with family here... but since I don't have a power cord for my powerbook, we are unable to watch them. But, we did bring 4 short movies we filmed on our video camera showing Jadzia and my parents. Since these were on the camera and not the computer, we were able to show them.
Transportation has been fun. Buses are just as crazy as always. Now that we have a video camera, I am tempted to try to sit in front of a bus and make a movie of a route traversing the city. It would feel like a roller coaster to anyone who watched it. The problem of course is showing the video camera in public. We might try the "hidden camera" approach and put it in a bag with a hole... Well, if we do it, it will be toward the end of the trip. But this is an idea I canīt let go of.
On the political front, today various indigenous groups had a symbolic ceremony for president-elect Evo Morales. The ceremony was held at the ruins in Tiwanaku. Yoli and I were at Tiwanaku last year, visiting the same ruins where this all took place. Click this link to read about it and this link to see photos of our time there last January.
I may not have this exactly right, but I believe the indigenous groups were declaring Evo their "mallku." Mallku is an Aymara word, which means something like "the boss" or "leader of the community." Evo, of course, is the first indigenous president to be elected in Bolivia. He said many things like "We will continue the fight of Che Guevara" and "This is like the plaza of the revolution of Cuba," linking himself with prominent latin american socialist historical events.
Tomorrow he will actually be inaugurated as president. I want to give him the benefit of a doubt, though I disagree with many of his proposed policies. I'm not sure many in Santa Cruz feel the same way, though. If he follows through in trying to nationalize the petroleum companies, Santa Cruz may push for independence. But that's a long way down the road. We'll see how it goes.
One other tidbit: since being elected, Evo has become something of a fashion trendsetter. His familiar dark brown sweater is being copied and sold across the country.
Final note: I am still trying to resolve my missing-cable situation. I've identified several possible Apple dealers... I just need to get to a phone and call them.
We arrived yesterday after a long flight. Jadzia did well on both legs of the flight and in the airports. We were surprised.
When we got to Bolivia, Yoli's mom and two of her sisters were there to greet us. Unfortunately after such a long trip, I don{t think Jadzia was ready for anymore new people or things. She cried for a long time. We eventually calmed her down and were able to nap a few hours (neither of us got much sleep on the plane, unlike Jadzia).
Since then, Jadzia has done well. She's met her grandparents, some aunts and uncles, and some cousins. I can tell the weather is a bit warm for her, but she's doing well.
An interesting note: In the U.S. almost everyone would tell us how much Jadzia looked like Yoli. Here, it's different. They all say how much she looks like ME! Go figure.
I would like to write more, but this internet cafe is really awful and I've already lost this entry once and had to re-write it. When we find a better cafe, I'll post more. Anyway, we're safe and sound. Hope you are, as well!
P.S. I am pretty dumb. I left both my computer's power cable and the iPod's firewire cable at home. I'm not sure yet if I'll buy replacements (or be able to find them)