Sick in Sucre

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Sunday July 23, 2006

This is a bad thing. The last time I wrote was Thursday and now it’s Sunday and we haven’t left Sucre yet. We did spend all day Friday around the city which I’ll briefly describe, but then there was a civil war in my stomach and the countless trips to the bathroom, the family’s expeditions for medicines around the city, and even a personal doctor’s visit to the hotel have been just some of the consequences. Right now I’m resting and recovering from losing every ounce of food and liquid and the soup I had four hours ago is still within me and has given me a good amount of energy. Today I’ve watched a couple Hallmark movies, old Tarzan, the second half of Little Women and way too many Bolivian commercials. There’s one real funny one where God gives this lady conditioner or something like that. Finding English on the TV is kinda hit or miss, but it’s there.

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Eddie is also not doing good, he was dehydrated and weak and I don’t know how he’s doing now cuz we’re in different rooms. Poor mom’s being run ragged.

The cousins are leaving tonight, for Cochabamba I think.

Well, I’ll catch ya’ll up on Friday’s expeditions. It was pretty high pace which might contribute to the sickness. In the morning we went to the Casa De Libertad, the place where the thoughts of freedom were born. We had an English tour which was very nice. I learned some interesting things. I was reminded again of how Simon Bolivar for whom the country is named was not involved in this country’s fight for freedom at all. Sucre, a fellow Venezuelan was a bit more. The two biggest heroes were a husband and wife who led guerilla fighting and whose portraits and ashes were at the Casa de Libertad. The woman’s statue is also in Cochabamba. I think her name’s Juana or something and both she and her husband died for the cause. I think they were even indigenous, at least to a certain extent.

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Another thing we discussed was the founding of the country. We saw the Declaration of Independence and portraits of some of the men who signed it, the group that decided how the country was gonna start. They had a choice between alliance with Argentina or with Peru, or autonomy. They chose autonomy. He says that they were looking at the moment and at their own fortune. At that time Bolivia was in its best moment with newly found mines providing lots of wealth and those men were probably affected by that.

Now for the first time Bolivia is completely remaking their constitution. This time instead of “white men” (which in Bolivia is more a social/economic class than a race) there is substantial representation by different economic and racial groups. They are going to gather on August 6^th at the Casa de Libertad. We need to pray that day that momentary thinking will not again hurt the country, that the foolish politics of this country will just once not prevail, that the left won’t take over even more of the earth. Bolivia is the poorest and weakest country in all South America and there are so many people that blindly follow socialism for its promises.

Well, we then hiked through to TangaTanga and had lunch and spent a few hours waiting for the museum to open, which wasn’t for a long time and then trying to find mom and Aunt Lucy. We finally left and walked to an old nunnery-turned museum. We saw the oldest organ to be built in Bolivia and Eddie played it. It was really cool to hear Bach on an old organ like that and to see my brother playing what most aren’t allowed to. In general though, Bolivia is very relaxed concerning touching old art. I mean, flash wasn’t prohibited anywhere we’ve gone and I’ve been able to touch and hold 2,000 year old sculptures of Pachamama. With special permission Eddie was able to play this organ and I was able to take pictures of it even with the sign saying “no playing of taking photos of the organ”.

Next we went to an old Catholic Church and then went up on the roof and saw El Cuidad Blanca, The White City. We then walked to the plaza, Eddie and me wandered around a bit and pretended to be loitering students in the university. We then went to a Catholic Mass and then joined the others back by the plaza for pizza. After that we returned and the battle began.