How I became an ambassador

The whole ambassadorial thing was thrust on me really. I had just been sitting there, observing a political meeting of the Kallawaya Indigenous people as they discussed obtaining autonomy from the Bolivian state (the topic of my PhD thesis), when the President of the Kallawaya autonomy assembly rose to his feet to give a speech, in the middle of which I was introduced as “the first English ambassador to the Kallawaya Nation”. I didn’t think it worthwhile pointing out to him or anyone else that England would have to go through some constitutional changes of its own before it goes sending novice ambassadors to incipient nations.

Now I don’t know if you’ve ever been suddenly and unexpectedly made ambassador to a nation whose very existence you had only recently became aware of, but it rather knocks you for six. I wasn’t sure what to do or say in response to such an honour. Naturally the next thing I was asked to do was to give a speech. I looked around me at what was an audience composed mainly of schoolchildren. The kids had been singing Bolivia’s national anthem to us, while their parents, sat to one side, looked on, no doubt proudly, in awe at the warbling abilities of their offspring. In the long-standing tradition of ambassadors past, present and future, I had attempted to mouth the words to the anthem myself, but with let’s just say limited success. “It is an incredible honour,” I began in my rickety Spanish, “to have the opportunity to be with you at the start of a historic process for the Kallawaya people”. I became aware that my audience, to whom Spanish was a second language, were paying me little attention. I continued on regardless for another minute, whilst the adults handed one another coca leaves to chew, and then sat down awkwardly. The schoolchildren looked rather bemused by my appearance. But then I was rather bemused by my appearance myself. As I had been sitting there a garland of fruit had been bestowed upon me. I didn’t know whether to wear it or eat it. I never took a bite of it in the end, unfortunately. I think one of the fellow dignitaries must have nabbed my bananas later in the day when I put them in their car for safe keeping. Such behaviour showed a lack of understanding of the proper respect due to ambassadors, I thought to myself. I tried to imagine how the Queen treated ambassadors at her garden parties, and decided that she probably didn’t tantalise them with edible garments which were then pilfered when the ambassador’s back was turned.

I didn’t go wanting for food though. After the initial introductory speeches we naturally took a break for lunch before we got down to the nitty-gritty. Lunch was served outside by the womenfolk of the community who brought forth pots of soup which they had cooked during the morning. I sat on a bench outside the community hall, and was pleased to be given one, two, and then three bowls of soup. My delight gradually turned to horror as this became four, five, six and seven bowls. Naturally, I didn’t want to offend anyone and so did my level-best to consume the contents of each receptacle, worrying that if I ate some but not others then I might be run out of town, the contents of the remaining bowls flying after me and my ambassadorship revoked. Luckily, by the time I had got through five bowls they were calling for the meeting to begin again, and although I was gently admonished for not dispensing with all of the refreshment on offer, I was simply told to return the untouched bowls to their owners, which I did, sheepishly, before entering the hall unsteadily, feeling like a human soup container about to explode.

During the course of two weeks I accompanied the autonomy assembly leaders to meetings in nine Kallawaya communities. At one point I was given ten bowls of soup to eat. Ten! Have you ever eaten ten bowls of soup? No? Well, me neither obviously. I followed the men in eating as many as I could (I believe the most I ever managed was six) and then handing them back to their wives who had provided them.

Although there was generally a surfeit of soup, this was contrasted with marked lack of cutlery. After the second or third meeting at which I had had to drink the liquid contents of the soups by holding the bowls to my lips and then pick the remaining solid content out with my hands, I thought I would be clever and buy a spoon at the local town. At the following meeting, when we were being served lunch, feeling very pleased with my ingenuity, I plucked out the recent purchase from my bag. My friend Luis was outraged by this. “Where’s my spoon?” he asked as I enjoyed the implement’s pleasant utility. “If you bring one spoon, you have to bring spoons for everyone”. I looked around the room at the forty or so poncho-clad men who until then were almost all unknown to me and decided to just put the spoon back in my bag. I never brought it with me to the meetings again.

It was on the morning of that meeting that my own culinary exploits led to the questioning of my potential parenting abilities. I had stayed the night in the house of a local Kallawaya family and in the morning, wanting to repay them for their hospitality, offered to cook them breakfast. They were sceptical, but curious, and eventually relented to my exotic offering of scrambled egg with potato and onion on some bread. Having overcome their initial reluctance to eat a non-liquid-based meal, all ten of the family seemed to be enjoying my cuisine, such as it was. I had served those present and had just enough left over to feed myself. I was content. I asked the mother of the family what she thought of the breakfast. “You will make a bad father” she told me. “What?” I queried. I didn’t comprehend. “You will make a bad father. Look! There is nothing left over in case we receive guests. What happens if someone else arrives? What will you give them?” I just laughed it off. The ungrateful so-and-so! Five minutes later a hungry looking visitor arrived at the door and there was nothing to offer them. My parenting lesson was learned.

At each of the meetings I attended, the President of the assembly continued to introduce me as their “ambassador”. I always expected people to laugh, though nobody ever did. Some months after the initial series of assemblies, I heard about a meeting in a community I had never been to before, and out of curiosity to see another part of the province I decided to make my way there to observe. It was a five hour walk from the town where I was staying and by the time I arrived I was sweaty and exhausted. Not a befitting condition for an ambassador. Although it was my first time in this locality, and I believed that I knew nobody, when I stuck my head around the door, I was greeted from afar by a man I recognised from the autonomy assembly meetings named Tomas. He ushered me to come in and sit down.

I spent much of the following five hours wondering what on earth it was they were talking about as the meeting was entirely in Quechua and I had not been practising what little I knew of the language. After sitting for some time chewing the coca leaves which I was given periodically, I noticed the sun going down outside and realised that as I had nowhere to stay in this particular village I would have to make my way to the neighbouring one where I had friends who would give me a bed for the night. I would have loved to have left surreptitiously, but having seen others who had departed shake the hand of all in the room one by one before making their exit I reflected that I would have to do the same. Self-consciously, I towered over each seated man, and gave them a warm handshake. “Nearly there”, I thought to myself. When I came to shake the hand of the man leading the meeting, he looked at me very quizzically, as if to ask me who I was and what I was doing there. Tomas, who was sitting next to the man, turned to him, cupped his hand to his mouth and told him in a reassuring tone “he’s the ambassador”. The authority seemed satisfied with this explanation, and so I made my way to the exit, reflecting on the legitimacy this status had given me, and hitting my ambassadorial head on the doorway on the way out.