Bolivian Rules

Living in Bolivia for un ratito, having Bolivian friends, and knowing those who have stayed with host families has made me familiar with several customs and beliefs shared by many of the people who live here. While most of them have something or other to do with food (and timing!), some are life lessons.

1. It is forbidden to eat sopa de mani (peanut soup) at night. Sopa de mani is one of my favorite Bolivian foods. To make it, you grind up peanuts in the blender until they are basically powder, mix that in with broth and sometimes milk or cream, add some cooked veggies and noodles, and top with tiny french fries and a good sized dollop of llajua (hot sauce). Come lunchtime, you'll see sopa de mani featured in maybe half the set lunches in the city. After lunchtime, not a chance! When I asked why, the answer was that the soup is too heavy and will stick to your insides and give you a stomachache if you eat it at night. I find this confusing because if something doesn't hurt my stomach at one time of the day, it tends not to harm it at a different hour.

2. Similarly, you cannot eat salteñas past midday. And again, as much as I love sopa de mani, salteñas are my one true love. To make a salteña, you basically take an empanada and make it better and harder to eat. It's the same basic idea--pastry shell with a meatish filling, but the filling is more like a stew. A sweet, spicy stew. Add the obligatory olive (plus pit) and tiny hard-boiled egg and you've got a salteña. I've finally mastered the art of eating one without spilling it all over myself but it involves using a bowl or at least a small plastic bag to catch the drip, I'm sad to say. Here's the problem: past midnight, there is little I wouldn't do if someone could just get me a salteña. Impossible. Salteñas are available from 8 am to 1 pm if you're lucky and that's it. I think maybe people get stomachaches if they eat salteñas past this hour because it means they have been sitting out in the sun all day, but someone told me it's really just because the dough is too thick and it will stick to your insides and make your stomach hurt if you eat a salteña in the afternoon.

3. My friend Allison prepared dinner for herself and her boyfriend the other night. She made a really elaborate salad complete with...walnuts. Before they started eating he asked, "are you sure it's okay to eat this salad?" She wasn't sure why it would be a problem, so he voiced his concern once again, "there are walnuts in it. we won't be able to sleep!" She assured him there is no proof that nuts affect your sleep patterns, and while he was slightly incredulous, he ate the salad anyway. She informed me that he slept just fine that night.

4. "Hay que abrigarse! Estamos en invierno!" It's winter, wear a jacket. I don't care if it's 75 degrees outside. You're going to catch a cold if you don't wear your jacket. It's winter.

5. Be on time to your bus. I learned this the hard way. After living here for several months and never seeing a bus leave on time, I foolishly believed all buses left half an hour late. This is not a source of annoyance, it's completely fine. It's expected. It's also awesome to take the 2:00 bus when you show up at the bus station at 2:20 because it feels like you're cheating time. I suppose I grew complacent because while in Santa Cruz we decided to pick up some dinner to-go before boarding our bus back to Cochabamba. I was a bit nervous about the timing but my friend Robyn (who had been living in Latin America for about a year and a half) told me she was always late and had NEVER missed a bus. Our bus was scheduled to leave at 7:30 pm. We got to the bus station, paid our terminal fee, and walked outside to the spot our bus was supposed to be. Not there! It was 7:36 and our bus was LEAVING the terminal! One of the guys from our bus company ran after us and told us he sold our tickets because we were late but he booked us on the next bus out of town. That was fine, but we were baffled as to how this could have happened. Not only was our bus leaving on time but they must have sold our tickets to other customers right at 7:30. I still am not sure what went down, but there had to be something else going on other than our bus simply leaving on time. Since then all my buses have left at least 30 minutes late.

6. My friend Cameron's family decided he was in love. He was not. He wasn't acting like he was in love either, or so I thought. One day, he was getting dressed in his room and while putting on his shirt he hit his hand on one of the blades of the ceiling fan. Being one to share his pain with others, he told his host mom he hit his hand and it hurt. Her reply was less sympathetic and more confusing: "You must be in love." Thinking he must just not have understood something, he left the subject alone. When his host sister came home, he told her his hand hurt because he hit it on the fan. Her response? "Who are you in love with?" Yep.

40 hours later

The Friday I left for London was full of stress. The strike was back on (not sure if it ever really stopped?) but this time it was serious. I planned to take a night bus to La Paz but the buses weren't running because there were blockades, so I left in search of a plane ticket. I was able to buy a ticket for 11:00 pm that night, so I planned to stay the night in La Paz and leave for the airport the next morning. The travel agent nicely reminded me that I needed to bring my passport to board the flight, which I knew, but my passport was also a source of angst.

Our lawyer sent my passport to Immigration in La Paz about a month and a half ago so they could process my one year visa application. In the week leading up to my trip, I inquired as to the whereabouts of my passport daily and was told, "mañana," every time. On Thursday I asked again, and again was told "mañana, seguro." The 'seguro' was a good sign.

Anyway after passing a semi violent blockade where agitated trufi drivers were throwing stones and wielding sticks I made it back to the office and my passport arrived! I am now a legal resident of Bolivia!

I flew to London really without much incident, besides my flight from Cochabamba to La Paz being delayed two and a half hours. That at least gave me time to join my friends at the bar for a bit.

London was amazing, I ate so much good food, hung out with my lovely parents and friends, and overall had a great vacation. The travel back home was strenuous. The flights themselves weren't particularly terrible and I even managed to sleep a bit, but I arrived in La Paz at around 6 am, hoping to take a flight back to Cochabamba instead of taking the 7 hr bus ride that I was definitely not up for. I got on the waiting list for a flight but there didn't end up being room and the next flight after that wasn't for 6 more hours so I just decided to take the bus. I had to wait in the bus station for an hour and a half (a rare and unpleasant occurrence) where I discovered that there is a sign in each bathroom stall that says "NO SPITTING." Is that really the biggest issue with the bathroom? Let me answer that one for you: no.

I got on the bus and as it turns out, I was lucky the buses were running since the week before there had been several landslides that blocked the road. I saw the remnants of a few of these as the bus cautiously drove over the fallen stones. That was fine with me. What was not fine was the excruciatingly slow speed the bus moved in the straight (clear of debris) highway which is the only part of the journey a bus can actually go reasonably fast. I felt like we were moving down a highway at about 20 miles per hour, with no visible impediments. During all of this, the child behind me proceeded to kick and push my seat so hard that if I pushed the button to try to recline it, the chair would come flying forward from the sheer force of this four year old girl's strength. We had a little battle at a few points throughout the journey and at one point I turned around and snapped, "por favor! déjalo!" which literally means, "please! leave it!" which may or may not make sense but she did stop for a bit.

The worst part of the bus ride from La Paz is the point when you are driving through the mountains and you can actually SEE Cochabamba. You think you are almost home, almost off the bus, almost to a clean bathroom (the bus has a bathroom on it but it is always, always, always locked), almost to a shower, almost to a bed, almost to food. No. It's still another hour and a half if you are on a normal bus but I was clearly not. Hours of seat-kicking later (and hours of imagining revenge that definitely verged on child abuse) we arrived in the outskirts of Cochabamba. Before getting off the bus the child reached over my seat and hit me on the top of my head. Nice.

I took a taxi home- the 2nd taxi I asked- because the first one didn't want to take me because there were too many vueltas (turns). Alright. Anyway, I got home and it was great. The one bit of information I learned from the whole experience, however, is that if you are a foreigner living legally in Bolivia (i.e. with residency or a long term visa) and you fly out of the country, you have to pay two taxes of about 25-30 dollars each, the tax that foreigners have to pay, and the tax that nationals have to pay, because I guess you are considered both foreign and Bolivian, for tax purposes, naturally.

Carnaval 2011

Just, you know, buying a Fanta

I suppose it's fitting to begin my blog with an account of Bolivia's biggest holiday, Carnaval. The festivities actually begin several weeks before the event itself and typically include (mostly) children throwing water balloons, squirting you with squirt guns, spraying you with foam, and sometimes just throwing cups or buckets of water onto you. The last time I was here I got routinely drenched every time I left the house, so I was surprised by the relative calm of this year's water-throwing in the month leading up to Carnaval, though I've been the target of water and foam enough recently to make up for it.

Two weeks before the big parade in Oruro is Compadres, a veritable festival of boy's night where the men of the city go out to bond and eat tons of meat and drink a lot of booze. Ladies typically aren't allowed into the city until around 11 pm, but we broke this rule. We had all the girls over for dinner and wine and we gossiped about boys (what else) and then ended up singing songs from Grease while standing on chairs in the kitchen. Girls' night indeed- but we still met up with the boys later and made Compadres quite a night.

Girls gone wild

Girls get Comadres a week later and from what I gather Comadres is a more full-on, day-long affair. It began with lunch for the SB staff (women only of course) and then I went home to rest up for what I knew would be a ridiculous night. The girls from my casa went over to the main house around 6pm and found everyone already drunk, some with red finger paint in their hair and most wearing strange hats, wigs or some other piece of costume they found lying around the house. There was a kiddie pool filled with water and two giant water jugs filled with sweet mixed drinks- not to mention a platter of jello shots (and tupperware of giant jello shots once they ran out of mini shot glasses) and also some tequila for good measure. Forced to catch up to everyone else, drinks were more or less shoved into our hands and shortly after that the band arrived. We proceeded to dance, run around in circles holding hands (because we're 5) and enjoy the live show. This went on for a while until we decided to go out around 10pm. Somehow I ended up with fairy wings and an apron on (the apron I did not remember until I found it in the corner next to the wings the day after). Needless to say my night ended early as I could not hold my own in the bar and sent myself home in a taxi to vomit once in the toilet and twice throughout the rest of the night on my floor. Friday morning I woke up not feeling great (obviously) but probably better than I would have felt had I not thrown up ALL OVER. Luckily Friday through Tuesday were national holidays and all I had to do was get myself to the main house to catch the bus to Oruro.

The people from my house arrived at the main house around noon and lots of the ladies I found there were in way worse shape than me so I didn't feel too bad. We went to Heroinas (one of the main streets) to hail a cab to go to the bus station and this trufi pulled over. Trufis are fixed route taxis and serve the purpose of a bus but there are no predetermined stops. Anyway this was one of the van trufis and instead of continuing to drive his normal route, the driver told us he would take as many people as could fit in his van to the bus station for 1.5 Bs (less than 20 cents). Since this was cheaper than a taxi we accepted his challenge and fit 18 people inside, somewhat less than comfortably. Halfway to the bus station we got stopped and the bus driver was ticketed. For carrying 18 people in a van, some standing, as this is highly unsafe? No. For being a taxi and not a trufi. He was find 30 Bs (about 4 dollars) so we all paid a little extra when we got to the bus station to cover his fine. When we all got out of the car there were people riding with us that I had no idea were even there.

Gringo Parade

We waited in the bus station for a long time because the bus was delayed for an unknown reason, and then we finally boarded the bus to Oruro. The ride was fairly uneventful until we were almost to Oruro and we got stopped by the police, who asked for our passports. We were all prepared and had paper copies of them, however we failed to copy the page that had our entry stamps on it. This was a problem though none of us really understood why, since the page with the entry stamp says we can't be fined and we aren't supposed to lose the paper but if we do it's okay. Mass confusion- we tried bribing but they didn't want that. We ended up having to leave Erik behind to sort it out.

We got to our house in Oruro that was one big wooden floor and one bathroom for the 50 of us. Less than ideal but we could all manage. Erik made it back, striking a deal with the cops and getting a lift into Oruro with them. The bus company got fined 50,000 bolivianos or something like that and they collected all our photocopies of our passports and gave us these papers that basically say we can travel without ID for a week. Since most of us drank heavily the night before, we just went out for dinner and then came back to the house and played cards and other games and then went to bed. Let's just say sleeping in a cold climate on a wood floor was not the most comfortable of sleeps.

We woke up in the morning craving breakfast americano (usually eggs and toast and jam and juice and coffee). After being told by a lady on the street that there would be no food in restaurants until 11 am and we would have to eat api con pastel (this thick sweet purple corn drink and cake) we could still not be deterred and we found a place that had coffee and bread. The owner told us he was the only cafe open that wasn't selling only booze- whether or not this was true I have no idea but I tended to believe him by the sheer amount of people on the street that were drunk at 8 am. He ended up having eggs too (!) and we happily ate our breakfast and headed to our seats in the stands to watch the parade.

The parade began at around 8:30 in the morning and we got to our seats around 10. We definitely hurried to get there but it was needless as the parade lasted 21 HOURS. Then there was another parade the next day. I made it until 2:30 am but a few stragglers stayed until the true ending at 5 am. The parade was amazing in many ways. For one, even though it lasted almost a full day, I still didn't get tired of it! The dancers got better as the day wore on and at night there were almost constant fireworks. True, I was tired of being covered in beer, foam, water, a bit of spit (that one was an accident) and the like but I love a good parade, and this was the best I've ever been to. There are tons of different traditional dances, the most typical of Oruro being the Diablada:

This dance starts inexplicably (seemingly) with a lot of polar bears and everyone in the stands chants "O-SO! O-SO!" and if you hold out your arms and have a bit of luck they will come give you a bear hug. The magic sort of ends when they take off their masks and you see their sweaty human faces. Above are the devils in the Diablada that follow the bear. After the devils comes an angel with a different but equally terrifying mask and sometimes the angel is followed by 3 or 4 smaller angels (one of my friends was a smaller angel. She looked beautiful and her costume cost $1000 which is nuts). This all means something but I need to read up a bit more on the history.

Osos!

One of my other favorite dances was the Tobas, named after a group of people from the Gran Chaco region of Bolivia. Apparently the Incas encountered them and were impressed by their dancing and their dress (as was I):

E.T. made an appearance

This was a really big hat

Other dances of note:

Doctorcitos: A satirical dance traditionally performed by indigenous peoples in fake glasses and fake large noses, with suits with coattails and tophats and canes to make fun of the Spanish bourgeoisie, specifically doctors, lawyers, and teachers.

Morenada: Typically groups of older women (las morenas) and younger (las morenitas) with very bright sparkly outfits followed by men in costume that look like tiered cakes but are supposed to be lizards and snakes and other creatures, and they hold noisemakers that are often made of dead armadillos. No one seems to be sure about the origin of this dance but most think it came from the suffering of slaves brought to work in the mines in Potosi, with the noisemakers reminiscent of rattling chains.

Morenada men

Tinku: Always a favorite of mine, based on ritual fighting amongst Ayllus (essentially clans) in the Andes and specifically in Potosi, it involves a lot of crouching, jumping, and arm swinging, and it looks awesome.

Caporales: The high school football team of all the dancers. They are hot. This dance also comes from slaves brought to Bolivia but in the Yungas region in the north. Caporales were essentially the slave drivers and their costume includes tall shoulders, military style pants, boots with tons of bells on them, and a whip. It's a crowd favorite and the audience loved the hot boys and cute girls and chanted "BESOS! BESOS!" I got a beso, thus winning a bet I made with 3 of my friends (first one to kiss someone in the parade gets $$$. We had a stipulation that once the first person gets a kiss everyone else gets 5 minutes to get a kiss themselves and start the bet over. Only Steph got a kiss within 5 minutes so we are still owed 50 bs.) Anyway- moral of the story, Caporales are super hot in costume, not so much out of it, but more so when they dance and jump and shake their hats around.

Caporales in action

There were lots of other dances but these were the highlights for me. We went to bed dirty and tired and woke up in much the same state, ate some saltenas, and hopped a bus back to Cochabamba to have the greatest shower ever and a nice warm bed. I can't wait until next year, or at least August when we get another parade (though with only 10,000 dancers instead of 35,000).

A really elaborate outfit

Other interesting things- every group started out with a car covered in cloth and tableware and this has only been explained to us as an offering to Pachamama, which clearly explains everything. And I also don't know why many of the dancers have masks with such large eyes but it's the stuff of nightmares. While playing "would you rather" I decided I would rather have a personal emergency wearing the wedding cake Morenada outfit than be chased by one of these: