My Little House

Last Saturday I accompanied my friend Valerio (from the Alpaca-herder community of Qullpani in the highlands of Bautista Saavedra) to the town of Laja, almost an hour´s drive away from El Alto in La Paz, where a curious event was taking place.

Saturday was the fiesta for the patron saint of Laja, the Virgin de la Concepcion. Apparently we had already missed the parade by the time we arrived, but in any case all of the action seemed to be taking place on a hill overlooking Laja, where probably around a thousand people had gone to sit and make little houses out of stones and grass. Each of the architects of the houses was putting the building blocks in place in the hope that this time next year they would have a life-size house.

On the basis that the houses being constructed represented the what would supposedly be reality in a year´s time, I like to think that when someone strode over my plot that a giant would be marauding over my land this time next year, rather in the manner of the BFG.

Each of those making their model houses supposedly has to return for the next two years in order to thank the virgin for helping them to construct their (life-size) house.

As you can appreciate from my construction below, I rather hope that if my some quirk of fate I do end up with a house this time next year (whether constructed by my own two hands or not), it looks nothing like the one I built last weekend.

Questions I am most often asked during fieldwork

What size shoes do you have?

Can you buy me some boots like yours?

Where are you from?

What is the climate like in England?

What is England like?

What altitude is England at?

Do your parents send you money?

How long have you been in Bolivia?

Do you like Bolivia / Charazani / Amarete /etc?

Will you be godfather to my child?

Are you married? (You`re not?! You should marry someone here!)

When are you going to La Paz? (I always have the feeling when I am asked this that people can`t wait to see the back of me.)

What time is it in England?

Will you take me to England?

What language do they speak in England?

Pig in a bag

The other day I got on the bus in Amarete in the high altitude part of the province to take a trip down to a village in the tropical part, and got a bit of a shock due my travelling companion.

A deaf/mute sat down in the seat next to me, and not long had he done so than a woman unceremoniously dumped a bag at his feet, before taking her seat a couple of rows in front. It was only when the bag began to sqeel and wriggle about that I realised there was an animal struggling to get out. The deaf/mute gave it a whack every now and then every time it became a bit too lively. I realised why the women had dumped the pig at his feet when the lady who took money for the tickets chastised him for bringing it on board and he was unable to defend himself.

The Bolivian secret of looking youthful

WARNING: Do not read this post if you don´t like reading about bodily fuids.

The main street in Cochabamba is Avenida Heroinas, so-named after the women who fought to defend the city from Spanish forces in the war of independence. Where Heroinas meets the second main street Avenida Ayacucho on one corner there sits the city post office, and next to it on Heroinas there are a variety of fast food stalls selling burgers, chinese food, and anticuchos (meat on sticks). On the other side of the street on the corner there is usually someone selling DVDs and CDs. One night while accompanying a female friend to her bus on the corner of Heroinas and Ayacucho we passed a little stall I hadn't noticed before, at which a man was selling second-hand American clothes. My friend H was interested in one of the dresses which was hanging up and got into a conversation with him about where and how he got the clothes. When he said that he got them from the port at Iquique (in Chile) H asked if he would be affected by the new law to bring in stricter regulation on bootlegged goods. He was dismissive of the idea, saying that he would only have to bribe the relevant official and he'd be fine. At this I told him about the time I'd had bribed an official at the Bolivian-Peruvian border in order to get a 90-day tourist stamp in my passport when he only wanted to give me 30 days. He told us about how he´d lived in Italy and had travelled throughout the whole of Europe. “Where are you from?”, he asked me. “From England”, I told him, “Oh, I haven´t been there”, he replied. Suddenly the man asked us how old we thought he was. I made a stab at 40, being suitably generous, but not excessively so. Looking very pleased with himself, he told us that he was actually 63, and asked us what we thought his secret must be. “Staying out of the sun?,” I ventured. He dismissed my guess with a grin that indicated he thought that his secret was too good for us to guess. “Semen,” he told us. “Semen?”, I queried. “Yes”, he said, “you have to spread it on nice and thick, every fifteen days”, motioning spreading it on his cheeks. I wondered whether the man was being serious. I asked him the question that occurred most readily to mind: “this is probably a silly question,” I said, “but is it your semen or someone else's?”. H laughed. “My own semen,” he replied, “though you can use someone else's semen, but you mustn't mix the two together”.

H needed to catch her bus so we said our goodbyes, and were about to leave, but before doing so H asked him his name. “A. Hitler”, he said; “Adolf Hitler”. “I'm very rascist”.

He told us that he was there regularly and that we should come back another day. With that we were on our way, not sure what we could possibly add to the conversation.

Later I told a couple of friends about what the man had said and they told me that spreading semen on one´s face, as far as they had heard, was a surprisingly common ageing solution. I was told that it was not uncommon for women to do the same with their results of their menstruation.

The Ex-Mallku

The ex-mallku* was listless. I don't think I'd ever seen anyone with less list. I could tell he was listless because one moment he was laying horizontally across three chairs, and the next he was making paper aeroplanes and flying them across the room at me. I didn't know what to do with the paper aeroplane that had aerodynamically flown straight at me. We were after all in a community meeting, and I naturally felt it disrespectful to fly paper aeroplanes across the room when the community leaders were speaking.

I folded the aeroplane several times, waiting my moment. The moment didn't come. I folded and re-folded. This sure was going to be one aerodynamic plane when it got the opportunity to spread its wings.  Eventually I could wait no longer. I made aim, and like a dart I hit my target: bullseye; right on the ex-mallku's head. There were giggles from the rank and file community members. The ex-mallku had been in the act of launching another plane in their direction. He continued in the act, unabashed.

The next day the ex-mallku would ask me: “I was powerful, wasn't I?” I had to agree that he had been. Two weeks previously, he had been the leader; the figurehead of the province's highland communities. Now what was he? Retired from office at 32; a simple alpaca farmer.

In the meeting there was no doubt of his potency. He knew it was no longer his place to direct the meeting; and yet... there was an air of expectancy when he spoke. All awaited his sage advice.

What is the next step for an ex-mallku? I'm happy with the simple life now, he told me; looking after my alpacas; taking produce to market. This is the life for me. 

* A mallku in the Aymara world is a leader of a groups of communities (ayllus) known collectively as a marka. A mallku is also the Aymara word for "condor".   

Football Tournaments

 

The communities in Bautista Saavedra are, on the whole, fairly autonomous units. People may barter with people from other communities, usually by travelling to a community at a different altitude where different produce is grown as a result of a different climate, but there are very few occasions where people from different communities get-together to socialise. One of the very few of such occasions is when a football tournaments is held. These always take place over two days and  generally (though not always) occur just before a fiesta. They are often entertaining affairs where local pride is at stake and are the venues for scores to be settled from previous competitions.

The most entertaining football tournament I have been witness to was in June in a small community at about 2,500m of altitude. About 10 teams from the surrounding communities had come to compete, with the prize for the winning team being a bull (the prize is always a bull). Although I took with me kit to play in, as I had walked about 6 hours to get to the community where the tournament was being held, I didn't have the energy to play once I arrived. The team that I put my support behind got knocked out in the semi-finals, but their nearest neighbours (let's call them team C) got to the final and played the team fielded by the alcaldia (the mayor's office). Team C are apparently notorious throughout the region for being bad losers and so it proved on this occasion. The game was going well, with all being square at 1-1 until Team C's goalkeeper seemed to handle the ball outside the area. The referee had little choice but to show the red-card. Team C weren't happy about it, but they got on with the game with only a little fuss. Shortly afterwards, their numbers were further reduced when another player from Team C received his marching orders (I didn't see the offence, but Team C complained bitterly about it). At this point things got very heated, with verbal abuse of one of Team C's players towards the referee turning to physical violence; he started by pushing the referee and then from somewhere grabbed a stick and proceeded to pound the referee with it. The ref, rather sensibly, fled across the pitch (while being chased) to take cover under the protection of the organizers of the event, with Team C's player threatening to kill the referee if ever he came across him again. The match was inevitably abandoned, and awarded to the alcaldia, who received the bull as a prize. By the time the prizes were given out, Team C had already left in disgust. I had great fun travelling back in the back of the truck with the bull, all the while doing my best not to be trodden on by said bovine. I asked someone from the alcaldia a couple of weeks later where they were keeping the bull. They told me with a grin that they hadn't had anywhere to keep it, and so had eaten it.