The Rest of the Travels

Monday July 31, 2006

We’re back in Cochabamba! It’s nice to be back, I was ready to return from all the traveling. Uncle Carlos is returning to the States this evening so I tried to get some information from him before he left. I asked about family dynamics here. In Uyuni the social worker girl said in compasino families (compasinos are farmers) the cholitas (the women) do the majority of the work. They wake up at 6 in the morning to get water, milk the cow, make breakfast, then go out to herd their llamas or sheep to grazing, taking along any kids that are younger than first grade or older than 6^th, the others go to school. They chew coca to give them alertness and numb their hunger and then return to their home to make dinner. They also have to wash clothes by hand, tend household animals like chickens, make and mend clothes, and anything else the household needs. And if their quinoa farmers it’s a very long and hard process to prepare that to sell, soaking and roasting and stomping and washing and drying and packing.

musings and description of La Paz and Tiahuanaco

So I asked Uncle Carlos if that’s “verdad” and he said yeah and filled in on the men. He says they help with the farming of plants, on Uncle Carlos’ property he has a traditional 50/50 agreement with a farmer who does all the labor and pays half the tractor, and then Uncle Carlos pays for everything else and the profit is split. But men rarely only do this because it doesn’t take all day, they are also bricklayers and store employees, or other labor things. Don Abram is a taxi driver sometimes, and takes the mom’s place of household manager when she is working in Spain. Uncle Carlos says that is more and more a trend, to work in Europe and so bricklayers and such are becoming more rare and the cost of construction is therefore going up. Another trend is to go work in Argentina, which Sarah (or as we all spelled it when she lived with us, Sada) did for a while after working in the States.

Anyway, Uncle Carlos suggests I live with a compasino family for a day and work alongside them, which sounds interesting but I am automatically coming up with reasons to not go to so far outside my comfort zone, or example, I stink at Spanish and know nothing of Quechua, I could add to a “condescending foreigner” stereotype, and put a family in economic hardship by eating their food. Ay caramba!

Well anyway, to give you a picture of La Paz, where our journey ended, it is very different from the rest of Bolivia. For example, they have public trash cans. I was so proud. It has high rise buildings, teenagers with piercings wearing “Iron Maiden” shirts, cars that are newer than the 90s and without cracked windshields, and first rate hotels next to classy cafes. Jonny had been looking forward to eating at Burger King for the past two weeks so we went there twice for food and twice for ice cream, even when our Senator relative wanted to take us to a nice Bolivian restaurant. Yes, he’s mom’s cousin, a very tired old man who is a Senator from Potosi and works in La Paz which is the unofficial capitol. We’ll see him on August 12^th for the family reunion too. It has been decided it’ll be at Aunt Lucy’s house, we need to start get ready for it.

To continue in describing our two days in La Paz, we went with my mom’s cousin to the big parade. It was really huge. All the university students and even faculty don their costumes and dance or play in this parade. I still haven’t found out why that day or anything like that. But anyway, the music is provided by brass and drums: boom, boom, boom, boom, blast, blast, boom, boom, blast, blast, blast, blast. The costumes were very elaborate and there were tons of people in the parade as well as watching. We recognized a dance we had talked about earlier at Gladys’ house, where the archangel Michael and the devil fight and Michael wins. He may win the fight but everyone likes the devil and the demons more I think because for one angel there was the main devil, and about 30 “demons” in short skirts. Yeah, that’s another thing, in general here TV cameras are not ashamed to skip the face and zoom in on the short skirts or low tops. Really it’s pretty bad. But anyway, I guess maybe the angel to devil ratio could be good to show how one on the good side can beat a legion on the bad side, but who knows what they’re thinking.

Aunt Lucy left Saturday night to be able to say bye to Uncle Carlos and Elizabeth joined her, happy to not have to walk around another day. We went that Sunday to the church, “Dios es Amor” which is pastured by Tito who married my parents and whose late wife helped Grandma Wiebe with the curriculum project. We also got to meet the lady who led mom to the Lord, which was really nice. We also met Luis and Peggy Lopez who came as guests that Sunday to speak, they used to teach at SETECA which is the seminary in Guatemala that Uncle Paul is/was/I’m not sure where the line is, President. They also know Grandma and Grandpa Sywulka, Uncle Steve and I think Aunt Anna and they knew that Dad existed, but never met him. So dear Sywulka Family, the Lopez’s send much love to you and were very happy to see us because as a family you are precious to them.

That Sunday afternoon we took a taxi to Tiahuanaco, ruins from Pre-Columbian, Pre-Incan times. These are the people who speak Aymara, the ancestors of the President Evo Morales. We hid our Spanish so the taxi wouldn’t cost too much and then continues to hide it to save 9 dollars each off of admission. It was 10 dollars to foreigners and 10 Bolivianos for Bolivians, at an exchange rate of 8 Bs to one US Dollar. But then we got a Spanish Tour Guide and it stunk to not understand and I was tired anyway, and so mom would basically repeat things the guide said slower and with easier vocabulary. But by the end he knew we spoke English and were pretty bad at Spanish, but at least we didn’t get in trouble. It was kinda bad though cuz on the return trip in the taxi we really let our English out after our driver had defended us to the ticket people as Bolivians. We played Big Ace in the car, which is nearly the same as Big Two, a game Edwin taught us. It’s so fun, especially cuz I’ve been winning! J

I forgot to talk about the actual ruins. They weren’t big like the Mayan ruins in Guatemala that we saw, but man those people could cut rock! Their preciseness still has people guessing at their method, but we did see plumb bobs like the ones we use at our house. We also saw the famous “puerta de sol”.

There was also a pyramid-ish Andean cross place that’s not been completely excavated yet, and there is a place where there was a pool in the center. It was an observatory for astronomers who developed a very good calendar, and there were rooms for the anstronomers right next to it. We wondered why they’d look at stars in a pool versus just look up. Eddie made a joke that it was so they wouldn’t get tired. Then we whispered about it possibly being out of humility and contrasting that to early philosophers who saw the human’s ability to walk upright and look at and ponder the heavens as a significant sign of uniqueness and a special gift to humanity. We asked mom to ask the guide why they looked in the pool and he said it was because it was too tiring to strain their necks for that long! I found that funny. And wouldn’t it be inaccurate too? I probably should double check that that guy was right in that they really did it all from that pool, because I don’t how you could figure out such a good calendar looking into a pool.

Anyway, we tried to go shopping but it was late and the people had left so we’ll have to go sometime here in Cochabamba. We took the bus at 11 at night and it was a nice ride, we watched National Treasure in Spanish, if anyone has seen it in a language they know and care to inform me on what it was about other than running around with clues from early America and some pretty girl, please tell me. We arrived at 6:30 this morning and got picked up by Uncle Carlos at 7:15, slept, woke up, ate lunch, played Big Ace and hearts, ate dinner, did something, played soccer with the cousins and Don Abram and his kids, and will now sleep again. From Bolivia, this is your host, Karissa Sywulka. Till next time.