It´s a sign!

 

Sometimes I see things that make me think: "only in Bolivia". It was just such a time when I saw this signpost on the corner of 16 de Julio and Herionas in Cochabamba.

 

 

For those who don´t understand Spanish, one sign reads "COCHABAMBA SAFE CITY", while the other reads "DANGER!"

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. 

Bolivianisms

Despite being a pretty fluent Spanish speaker (and speaker of Bolivian Spanish at that) for many years now, I am still regularly left baffled by the use of the language here (and not being familiar enough with the Spanish from Spain, I can't tell completely whether what seem like eccentricities of the language are particular to Bolivia or a characteristic of Spanish itself). Some of the oddities that confuse me the most are as follows (obviously English contains numerous examples of complete nonsense as well, and I am aware that many things seem odd simply because they don`t translate well into English or because we have different conventions of language):

Stating the blindingly obvious:

It is common in Bolivia to ask questions to which the inquisitor already knows the answer, and for which the answer is in fact indisputable. I am generally left unsure how to respond when asked such questions, and generally reply with a simple "yes". Recent examples are when in a friend's house I was brushing my teeth and their son asked me "are you cleaning your teeth?", and when I was on the bus about to leave for La Paz and the guy sat next to me asked me "are you travelling?"

Questions which aren't really questions:

For example, when someone is asking me a question about where I am from and so on, it is common for them to follow up with a question like "tus papas?" ("your parents?") completely out of context (i.e. we hadn't been talking about my parents or family in general). As far as I'm concerned this question makes no grammatical sense and barely any logical sense either (though I generally interpret it is asking whether I have parents).

Yes or No?

This is often asked quite aggressively in the form of a question tag. Typical use might be "el gobierno esta corrupto, si o no?" ("the government is corrupt, yes or no?" would be the direct translation, but a better translation would be "the government is corrupt, do you or do you not agree with me?"). The correct response is, I believe, always to answer "si", but I have made the mistake of answering in the negative, by mistakenly believing that the questioner was actually asking for my opinion. Anyone who asks "si o no?" is generally a complete bore, because apart from that generally being an appropriate description of their personality, they almost always use it around 500% more than necessary, and 2 minutes into any conversation with such a person, the appropriate response is to slap them (I haven't done this up to now though).

Rudeness:

What I see as rudeness is more extremely direct speech, which is used a lot in Bolivia (but especially in the countryside). For example, in Charazani, the town where I have been living in the countryside, a couple of people, when they have seen my laptop or my camera have said to me "Me lo vas a vender" ("you`re going to sell it to me"), which goes beyond rude and sounds a little agressive. In another context it would be common for one person to say to another "me vas a llamar" (you`re going to call me"), which is direct, but doesn`t sound as rude as the first example.

Saying something is going to happen when it is already happening:

So far I only have one example of this, though perhaps there are others: It is typical that when it is already raining (though not strongly), and often has been for some time someone will say "parece que va llover" ("it looks like it`s going to rain"). I never cease to be baffled by this.

Odd questions:

In Bolivia, when someone yawns, someone else always asks them if they are hungry. I am rather bemused by this because as far as I am aware, nobody, in the entire history of humanity has even yawned because they were hungry.

Actually, I can`t say this is anything typical of Bolivian speech and possibly belongs in a different article, but the other day somebody asked me: "¿Cual es tu nombre cuando estas en Inglaterra?" ("what is your name when you are in England?") as though I changed my name depending on where I was living. I thought this was hilarious.

New Year´s Eve

New Year´s Eve in Bolivia can be a physical and mental workout. The variety of rituals involved vary from one region to another, but all are intended to get you off on the right foot as the year begins.

Before the night begins, men and women should buy women red or yellow underpants, which they have to put on as midnight approaches. The red symbolises love and yellow means money. If you are wearing, for example, red underpants at midnight, then you will have plenty of luck in love in the coming year.

The first set of rituals on the night involve food. Immediately after the clock strikes 12am, each person at the New Year´s party eats 12 grapes, one for each month of the year, and for each grape makes a wish. Either just before or after doing this, a toast will be served with (cheap) champagne in most houses.  The typical plate which is served is pork. The reasoning behind this is that pigs always move forward, never backwards (check this out next time you see a pig); a pig always eats moving forward, whereas a chicken (for example) eats walking backwards. By eating pork, you are therefore starting the year moving forwards, rather than backwards.

The next ritual is a mental exercise. Each person must count the money that they have on them at the time, or can easily reach. This can be real money from their wallet or fake, monopoly-style money, which is sold in vast quantities in the markets before New Year´s Eve. I´m not entirely sure what the purpose of this is, but I think the idea is probably that as a result, throughout the year you will be counting your (vast quantities of) money. Once the money is counted, beer is then poured over the money, as an offering to the pachamama (the earth mother), who will hopefully take this offering into account by somehow multiplying the person´s current stash.

One final ritual (which I didn´t see this year, but did experience in the previous New Year´s celebrations), is for each member of the house to run up and down stairs. They may do this while counting their money. Travelling up and down the stairs represents the travelling they will do during the year to come, and by frenetically making their way from one floor to the other, they will of course be making sure that they barely stay still for the next twelve months.

In Amarete, to bring in the new year, we did all but the last of these rituals. The party didn´t begin until midnight, and then went on for the whole of New Year´s Day (though I sensibly went to bed at about 3am and got some shut-eye). For the most part, the party involved heavy-drinking (as is the case with every party in Amarete), though in the plaza from about midday onwards, many people danced Moseñada, along to live music. The most fun part of New Year´s Day was probably the evening, when a group of young people from each of the zones of the town, led by one man bearing a flag, joined hands, and ran, snaking their way around the plaza and then down to the house of one of the local authorities. This is known as Cach´uar. In the patio of the house, more and more men and women, adults and children, young and old, joined hands, running pell-mell around the patio, led by the flag-bearer, every so often one or more of them slipping over as the speed on the uneven ground became too much. Although I´m yet to be exactly clear on the significance behind cach'uar, I´ve been toild that the "dance" is performed to please the elements of nature.

The Price of a Life

There were two notable deaths in the province in the last week or so. The first was as a result of torrential rain throughout the region, which caused several landslides and (somewhat ironically) cut off water for a few days in Charazani and other nearby communities. One landslide led to a rock falling on a house and crushing a man inside, which apparently made the national news and led the Governor of La Paz to drop by (hopefully to pledge that at his level of government they would be giving as much aid as possible to help clear the roads and suchlike). Almost a week later, when I walked along the road that leads up to the community where this had occurred, to meet a Kallawaya I know in his community, I saw another landslide that had deprived someone of their kitchen and was blocking a good portion of the road. My friend told me that their problem was that they were lacking a wheelbarrow to clear away the rocks and didn´t have the 350Bs (about £35) that one would cost in Charazani. I wanted to help, but felt that it should really be the job of the local authorities to provide them with a wheelbarrow in their hour of need, and in any case didn´t have anything like that amount on me at the time.

The other death was somewhat more shocking when I heard about it, and was in no way caused by natural phenomena. An old man in a community several hour`s walk away from Charazani had fallen asleep in the street after drinking too much. Two boys aged ten and eleven set alight to some part of him, apparently thinking that they were playing a trick or a joke on him, and that he would wake up, not realising that because he was already drenched in alcohol he would become a human fireball. The whole ayllu (collection of communities) was naturally in shock at these events and a few days later meetings were held to determine what sanction the boys would face for their actions. I was able to observe community justice in action at close quarters, when men and a few women from the four communities that make up the ayllu gathered in the square to debate the fate of the boys. After several hours of discussion, involving back and forth between community leaders, relatives of the deceased, and the boys´ fathers, it was decided that the boys (or their families) should pay reparations of 8,000Bs (around £715 at time of writing) each. The cost had originally been set at 10,000, but after pleading from the boys´ fathers, that they weren´t millionaires and simply wouldn´t be able to repay such a sum, the amount was reduced.

Although the amount seemed small to me considering what they were being made to pay for, when recounting the events to a friend in a nearby community afterwards, she wondered how the boys or their families were going to manage to scrape together the money to pay it back.

The World is Full of Magic

A couple of weeks ago, walking up to the top of a hill where I would be visiting a mine, a sacred lake was pointed out to me on the way. This lake, I was told, was where people from several different communities in the province came to sing and dance in order to ask for rain when there was a a particularly pronounced dry spell. The men I was with suggested that I take a photo of said lake, however, when I went to take the photo my camera lens wouldn´t open. I had been having some problems with the camera ever since I made the foolish mistake a few weeks back of lending it to someone for a few hours and when they gave me it back it was clear as day that they had dropped it on the ground. Once at the mine, by persistently switching the camera on and off again eventually I got it working, and took a few photos of the miners at work. However on the way back down, when again I attempted to take a photo of the lake, with the men accompanying me in the foreground, the lens once more refused to open. The men joked that the lake didn´t want to be photographed.

When the next day I went to visit a Kallawaya in another community and told him of what had happened, he thought it unlikely that my camera had malfunctioned because of the possible displeasure of the lake itself at being photographed. He did though tell me that many of the local lakes were enchanted. For example, he told me, in the lake in the mountain above his community, a man who had gone out fishing one day was driven raving mad after a mermaid appeared to him. He had afterwards tried local remedies to return him to sanity, but according to my Kallawaya friend, these were given to him by quacks, and the only reason he had gone to them were because they were cheap. The man had never found all his marbles again. What he should have done, apparently, and what any right-thinking Kallawaya would have helped him to do, so he told me, was to have been lowered into the lake, with the carcases of five different anmals attached to him (I forget which). The demon spirit within the lake would have taken the animals as offerings and left him alone.

Before leaving my friend`s house, he pointed out to me that the river which I had walked through on my way there had a demon in it. I tried, with great difficulty, to keep this thought out of my mind while crossing on the way back.

My camera still isn´t working, by the way.