Bolivians: Flaky

When going to meet Bolivians, it helps to take a book with you.

This past week in La Paz, I have had two dissapointing experiences related to meeting people. The first, I was supposed to meet a kallawaya friend of mine. I called him in the morning from La Paz and we arranged to meet in El Alto, La Paz´s satelite city. I called him on the way: answer phone. I kept calling and calling, until I got to the specific location where he had told me that he lived, but still nothing. In all I was calling him for about two hours and eventually gave up when it started to get dark and I went down to La Paz. The next day I called him, and he asked me "what happened? I waited for you!" I was flabbergasted, as to me it was I who had been doing the waiting.

A couple of days later I arranged again to go and visit him, and started calling from La Paz. Again, only the answer machine. An hour and a half later I was able to get through to him and we eventually met in the spot we`d arranged to a couple of days previously. It turned out that there was no reception in his house, so that was why there was no way of calling him when I was supposed to be meeting him.

The other slightly annoying experience was meeting a local anthropologist who is the director of a university here. We spoke on the phone a couple of days previously and arranged the date and time to meet, and he didn`t show up to his office. I wasn`t the slightest bit surprised at this though because more often than not when we have arranged to meet, he hasn`t shown up, and when I try calling him of course, more often than not he doesn`t answer his phone.

Tardiness, or non-appearance for dates by Bolivians is commonplace. I seem to remember once being told that it is a good idea when making arrangements to meet Bolivians to arrange to meet more than one person at the same time and then one of them might actually show up.

When meeting one ex-girlfriend I got so used to her tardiness that I would arrive later and later myself, meanwhile she gradually began to arrive earlier as she realised that when we arranged to meet at 4pm that was the time that I generally arrived at. Eventually (as I became acquainted with Bolivian customs), it was I who was often arriving later than her, and it was her who became annoyed.

In fairness, a disregard for timekeeping is not something restricted to Bolivians. One of my best friends in Bolivia is a Peruvian and I had to get used to the scenario when we arranged to meet somewhere to go out being something like this: We arrange to meet at 10pm: I wait until 11pm before eventually calling him to see where he is; he says he is just coming; I wait some more... he eventually turns up at about 12am. I now just go straight to his house in order to avoid all of this.