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.

The Kallawayas: A hospitable bunch

I never cease to be surprised by how hospitable the people in my fieldsite are towards me. Very rarely do I visit someone and not receive a meal almost immediately. This can be quite annoying if I pay a visit shortly after lunch, and am consequently already pretty full and in no need of extra sustenance. Quite regularly I have to turn down food offered to me, telling my host that three bowls of soup and a plate full of potatoes is about sufficient for me, because as soon  as one finishes a bowl, a refill is immediately on the agenda. 

At a Kallawaya wedding I`ve been to, the most popular presents to give to the bride and groom were bags of blankets and sets of plates. I took this as further evidence for the hospitality of the Kallawayas, with such presents helping the couple of cater for the many guests they would presumably welcome into their home. 

Earlier in the year, I and a Dutch girl (who along with three friends from Sweden was staying in the community for a couple of days) cooked breakfast for our host and her family. This amounted to ten plates of scrambled egg with onions, potatoes and bread (this was my idea of breakfast from what was available). There was exactly enough for each person who was there, which I thought was a job well done and I metaphorically patted myself on the back.

I was chastised by our host, who told me that I would not make a good father, because there wasn't anything left over in case visitors came. About 10 minutes later a visitor did arrive and there was nothing to offer them. Next time I cook breakfast I shall imagine myself to be feeding the five thousand.

You know you´ve become a local dignitary when...

A couple of weeks ago I was asked to judge a children´s talent show. It was the night before "dia del estudiante" and the school in the town where I have been staying was having a talent show and competition to find the "Ñusta 2012" (something like the princess of the school for that year). I went along just to watch out of a general sense of curiosity, but sitting towards the back of the hall where the event was about to take place, I kept hearing one of the teachers call out plaintively for the town´s judge to make an appearance. However, his absence continued to be pronounced, and when a couple of teachers started to look in my direction and mutter to each other, I had a feeling what might be coming next. I was asked to join the two secondary school teachers who were already sat on the judging panel, and the show was ready to begin.

Now I don´t know if you´ve ever had to judge a ñusta competition in a Bolivian primary school but it´s trickier than you might think. The girls trot out one by one dressed very nicely in a costume traditional in one of Bolivia´s nine departments, and dancing a dance typical of the region. You have to score the girls in such categories as their personality, their costume, and their dancing. The fact that you have to compare girls aged between about 5 and 11 makes it rather taxing comparing the merits of each girl, because of course a girl aged 5 cannot possibly be expected to dance as well as one twice her age. In fact it was hardly surprising that she barely looked like she know what was expected of her.

For the record, we chose a girl aged about 9 who was dressed in the costume typical of Chuquisaca and was dancing pujllay. I think we made a wise choice. Surprisingly, I thought, none of the rest of the girls seemed to be too upset about losing out.

After the competition there was dancing from individual students and groups. The strangest act of the night was a girl doing Indian style dancing, complete with full comstume (she was quite good), but certainly the most innappropriate was a girl of about 9 years old dancing reggaeton.

At the end all the teachers came on to do an act based on the Mexican TV programme "El Chavo del 8". Though many of the adults probably enjoyed it (i did), the kids merely seemed rather bemused.

Bolivian Road Safety

I took this photo last year in La Paz. It either shows the most dangerous hopscotch in the world or the most fun way of crossing the road. Probably both.

Being able to cross the road at zebra crossings at all in Bolivia is a rarity, and being able to hopscotch across, a luxury. In Bolivia, drivers generally interpret the zebra crossing as being the place where they should place their car while they wait for the lights to change, rather than stopping just behind it to allow pedestrians to walk across.

A novel approach to combatting such laxityon the part of drivers is for men and women dressed in zebra costumes (who have presumably been employed to do so by the local government) to stand at zebra crossings when the lights turn red, blocking the traffic until the light turns green and the drivers are free to proceed. This is most prevalent in La Paz, but I have also seen the people in zebra costumes in Cochabamba.

Here there is a video of the zebras in action:

Another thing that has caught my eye recently concerning road safety has been an advert on Bolivian TV in which women dressed up as air hostesses stop traffic in one Bolivian street to show driver how to do up their seat belts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZJTpWkj1GE. The camera then pans to the drivers, who after being instructed, are all doing up their seatbelts. People don´t seem to get the idea that the belts are there for their own safetly. The advert ends with statistics comparing the number of deaths in planes last year in Bolivia (0) to the number in road traffic accidents (5523).