Goodbye Again

Yesterday we celebrated the 12th anniversary of the barrio with our friends in Loma Pampa. The day included various speeches and words of thanks, followed by games and performances. Some of our students sang and played guitar, others danced, and some competed in the races, highlighted by Carolyn's big win in the spoon-and-egg relay. It was a proud day for New Jersey.

The events of the day were all set against the backdrop of the community center, now beautifully painted inside and out, and the incredible mural that our students created over the course of the last ten days. This mural represents hours of work by students, program faculty and staff, and members of the Loma Pampa community, all of whom devoted their time, energy, and creativity to this project. The result is a truly unique work of art, unlike anything to be found anywhere in Cochabamba's impoverished southern zone.

Watching the events of the anniversary celebration unfold, with hundreds of people gathered in the space of the community center, all talking, laughing, eating and playing, I was powerfully struck by the fact that all of this was made possible by the generosity and hard work of so many people, both in the US and Bolivia. In the space of three short years, we turned a barren patch of ground into a thriving social space, where people can gather and a host of social services can be provided. This project stands as proof that international collaboration need not happen only at the level of governments. Individuals and communities (and universities!) have the ability to make powerful contributions, improving people's quality of life, producing new kinds of friendships, and promoting cross-cultural understanding. Maybe no one of us can change the world, but we can make positive change. This project is proof of that.

After the anniversary celebration we adjourned to don David and doña Celia's, where we ate an incredible meal (lapping, with Celia's famous camotes) and celebrated Ben's birthday with a giant cake that just barely fed the assembled crowd. At the end people made more speeches. Tears were shed, but I think we all left with a very warm feeling, glad of our friendships and proud of our accomplishments in the barrio.

This marks the end of another year of the Rutgers University Study Abroad in Bolivia program. Many thanks to all the people who have supported this program over the years. You share in our accomplishments. Hasta la vista!

Almost Done

Our time in Bolivia is almost through, and we are putting the final touches on our work. First among these tasks is the mural, which a few dedicated volunteers finished this morning. It is a wonderful thing, and we are very excited about it. The mural will be inaugurated on Sunday at the Loma Pampa 12th Anniversary Celebration/Despedida (goodbye party) for Rutgers. This event will feature, among other things, dance performances organized by our students, an eating competition, relay races, singing (also by our students), and a trash collecting competition, organized by Pamela, who is somewhat obsessed with garbage :-)

Photos to follow...

Mural

Today we began work on the mural that will grace the rear wall of the community center in Loma Pampa. With the help of a professional artist to guide us, we spent the day transforming a blank wall into a work of art, which will stand as lasting tribute to our work in the barrio. The photos tell the story - we will return on Friday morning to finish the work, in time for the anniversary celebration, and our big goodbye, in Loma Pampa next Sunday.

TIB

I went to La Paz for the day yesterday, to speak at a conference on racism in Bolivia, and on my way back to Cochabamba I had a TIB moment. The students coined this acronym (TIB = This Is Bolivia) to refer to a range of circumstances that are best explained by the fact that, well, this is Bolivia, and anything that can happen, will happen.

The event I was attending ended much earlier than I had anticipated, so I called my travel agent in Cochabamba to try to book an earlier departure than my scheduled 8:50 PM flight on BOA airlines. She was able to get me a flight leaving at 7:30 on TAM airlines, for only $40 (airfares being relatively cheap in Bolivia). Being a savvy Bolivian traveler, I asked the travel agent to leave my original BOA ticket open: If something were to go wrong with the TAM flight (TIB), I wanted to have the backup option of my original 8:50 flight. So I headed to the airport a good two hours in advance, as the traffic is really bad out of La Paz to the airport in suburban El Alto, got my ticket, paid the airport departure tax at a separate window, and went to the boarding gate.

At about 7:15, the gate attendant announced the boarding of a flight, but it was not my flight - for some reason (TIB), another TAM flight was slated to leave at 7:45 from the same gate as my 7:30 flight. There then began a great chaos, as Bolivians on two different flights clashed and intermingled, one group (the 7:45 flight) clamoring to board (Bolivians are always extremely anxious to board flights, buses, you name it, reserved seats be damned) and the other group (my 7:30 flight) trying to find out what the hell was going on. Of course (TIB), no explanation was given, though the TAM gate attendant had an extremely annoying smirk on her face that seemed to imply some secret knowledge. This was revealed at about 7:40, when the 7:45 flight was entirely boarded, at which time the gate attendant announced that our plane had not yet arrived, and that our 7:30 flight would be leaving about 45 minutes late. People in the boarding gate actually hooted and whistled, like at a villain in an old-time silent movie. I approached the still smirking gate attendant and asked her if the flight was actually en route, and she ensured me that it was and would certainly arrive by 8:15.

This is when my own Bolivia craziness kicked in (TIB can also describe one's own state of mind when contending with these kinds of situations). Deciding that the gate attendant was lying about the plane being en route, and noting that my original 8:50 BOA flight was scheduled to depart from an adjoining gate, I opted to check in to the BOA flight, so that I would have two options ready to go. So, I headed back out to the terminal (I had to persuade the security attendant to let me go back in the wrong direction through the checkpoint, there being no other exit back to the terminal, which for some reason he allowed me to do, TIB) and checked in to the 8:50 flight. (BOA, it turns out, also had an 8:10 departure to Cochabamba, and one woman waiting to check in to the 8:50 flight was getting ugly in line, trying to pressure the counter people to allow her to board the earlier flight. I tried the same thing, but to no avail.) I paid my airport tax for the second time, passed through security again (no need to remove your shoes, TIB), and again stood at the departure gate.

Now armed with two tickets on two separate flights, I determined to leave on the first one that seemed likely to depart. This, it turned out, was the TAM flight: The gate attendant was not lying, the plane arrived at 8:15, and by 8:40 we were winging to Cochabamba. So for $40 and a whole lot of hassle, I managed to leave La Paz ten minutes earlier than I would have if I had simply waited for my original 8:50 BOA flight.

Sigh. TIB.

Charque

Last night I went with don David and his family to eat charque. This was a special occasion - don David's daughter was celebrating her 13th birthday - and so they chose something special to eat. (In Cochabamba, every event is marked by eating, usually in large quantities).

Charque is dried llama meat, shredded and fried to a fatty crisp. I don't know if they eat it elsewhere in the Andes, but it is a specialty in Bolivia. My son Ben loves it, and had been asking for it since we arrived in Bolivia, so he and his friend Pete enjoyed the evening immensely.

Torotoro

The students are off for a three-day trip to Torotoro, a lovely pueblo in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by some of the most astonishing natural wonders in Bolivia. Students will hike through steep-walled canyons, scramble through tunnels both dry and wet, splash under waterfalls, and step in the footprints of ancient dinosaurs. In addition, this weekend Torotoro is celebrating its annual fiesta, highlighted by parades, dances, and bull fighting (in which the bulls, unfortunately, are required to fight each other). The students will come back to Cochabamba on Saturday night, exhausted but, I hope, invigorated, and ready for the human rights fair that we are running in Loma Pampa on Sunday.

Defensoría del Pueblo

Today I gave a public talk at the Defensoría del Pueblo, the office of the Bolivian Human Rights Ombudsperson. I spoke for an hour on problems of justice and rights in the periurban communities where I work, and then my colleague spoke about our ongoing project to bring legal and psychological services into these communities. The talk was well received.

What do we have in the United States that is equivalent to this office? If a citizen has a complaint against an entity of the government, to whom can they turn? It strikes me as remarkable that we don't have a similar office in the U.S. But then again, we don't really think of ourselves as having human rights in the U.S. Sure we have civil rights, but we seem to think that human rights only belong to people in faraway lands. How is it that Americans have excluded themselves from possessing something that is meant to be the universal property of all humankind?