"No! Es Feo!"

Since I have extensively explored the southern side of the Prado, I decided yesterday that I would explore the northern side, which includes Plaza Murillo and the older "colonial" part of the city. There's not much interesting to say, so I'll just let you gaze at the pictures...

[Plaza Murillo]








So the following photo have an interesting story: A couple of years ago the government forces and the city police had a showdown of sorts…it was described to me as being surreally similar to an old western shootout, with each faction lined up on either side of the square, shooting at each other. The holes in the side of the building are the remnants of the shots fired. Cool, eh?



[Colonial Center]






[Okay, I’m sorry, I had to take a bit of an artsy photo]





The following photos are of Calle Jaen, a spectacular street that I really should have discovered sooner. It’s really narrow, cobblestones, and all the buildings are painted different bright colors. This is also where a lot of the state museums and newer bars are located.







[Wandering out of Calle Jaen and more towards the Prado]



[San Francisco Plaza and church]





The following pictures are of the Sagarnaga area and the Witches Market, which is right up the street from the San Francisco Plaza. While it is a pretty touristy area, I have to admit that the textiles that they sell there are spectacular.



Right after taking this photo I got yelled at by one of the vendors. She asked me to see my camera, and then proceeded to shake her head and say “Que feo, que feo!”, which basically means “How horrible!”













[I snuck in a shot when she wasn’t looking…]



[Coca Museum]

The things I hear from my bedroom

This morning, while writing a flurry of emails to organizations and people involved in public health, I have heard:

- about 10 gunshots
- what sounded like a dog attacking a person...lots of growls, howling, and a woman and child screaming
- my landlady yelling to her daughter "Innnnneeeeezzzzzz"
- two cats playing on the roof next door
- the customary mini-buses yelling their destinations "HositalObrero-AvendiaArce-PlazadelEstudiante-SanPedrooooo"

In the past week, I have also heard:

- what sounded like a dog getting run over
- kids playing tag up and down my central staircase
- domestic violence, although i tried to pretend that i couldn't hear the drunk man yelling at his wife
- spanish covers of "Dust in the Wind" and other classic hits blaring out the next door window

Soon it will be time to get out and walk around for a little while, I think.

The First Violin Lesson

My buena amiga Karim, who I mentioned a little while back, brought me to her friend’s house for dinner last week for a La Paz version of lasagna. Itwas a strong group of middle-class working women, a few of which also happen to be in a hard-core rock band called Libellula (which is hilarious and fascinating in itself, more on that in a later post). I may actually get the chance to be their violinist - when I first met Karim and told her that I played the violin, she also mentioned that she was in a music group, and I jumped at the chance to meet more people and play a bit of non-classical music. So anyway, I was hanging out with these women at their house, feeling a bit out of place, when I started chatting with Vivi, a really fun and energetic woman…who also mentioned that she owns her grandfather’s old violin. Eager to meet people (anyone, really), I offered to give her lessons, so we exchanged contact info. I’m sure she walked away thinking that I was a nice young gringa, but that I would probably never contact her.

Well…I emailed her a few days back, and tonight she came over to my apartment for a lesson. Before she came over I was thinking to myself: “Nadine, how do you start from scratch with something that feels like it’s my third (and wooden) arm?” I’ve been playing for so long and it’s so natural to me that I had to literally sit myself down and think about how to present the violin to someone who doesn't know what a chin rest or vibratto is. I hadn’t really decided how to give the instrument its proper introduction, but as soon as she took her violin out of its case, I started remembering my first year or so of playing, and with it all of the little tricks and tips that my teacher had used. While it made me happy to show her how to tune the instrument, how to hold it, and how to use the bow correctly, the best part, far and way, was seeing the look of surprise on her face when she realized that could make a sound all on her own. And yes, it did inflate my ego a little bit when Vivi told me that I was a great teacher, but my sense of pride came mostly from knowing that I could (potentially) bring someone into “the world of the violin,” as she called it.

I’ve always said that if I were to save one thing in a house fire, it would be my violin, but this is perhaps the first time in my life that I’ve truly known how important it is to me. I honestly don’t know what I would do without it here in La Paz. It’s like an automatic stress reliever - hearing the echoes of my slightly unpolished rendition of a Bach sonata reminds me of home, but mostly it brings me to a place where no one and nothing can touch me, not even the intense pangs of homesickness that I feel every now and then.

When she asked me if she could pay me, which is of course ridiculous, I got a little flustered and shushed her. So I told her, instead, that she could bring me a nice bottle of wine Bolivian wine, and also that she could show me around her favorite parts of the city. So on Saturday we’re going to wander through Miraflores, exploring the part of the city that I don’t really know yet. So even if this whole public health-volunteering deal is a bust, at least I've got my violin.

On Internet and Feeling Old

The internet access in my apartment, sadly, is one of the most important things in my life in La Paz right now. It’s been caput for the last few days, and I’ve been in a bit of a frenzy, more anxious and sad, if you will. It’s not even that I end up using the darn thing all that often, it’s just important that I feel connected to the part of the world that I know best in some way, even if it does involve a lot of electronics and binary code. I finally got sick of using the oh-so-slow connections at the local internet cafes, and I decided to give the service provider a call and see if I could get it fixed. After calling the company 3 times and explaining to them over and over again where I live (my Spanish accent becomes very forced when I’m nervous), they finally sent someone over to check it out. Turns out the other night when I blew a circuit breaker I messed up the settings in the modem, so the technician played around with my computer for about an hour and fixed it. I feel that this marks a turning point in my ability to navigate this city – I can now communicate with Bolivian customer service, que bueno.

Having sat around my house for 3 hours, waiting for the people to fix my internet, I decided that a night out on the town didn’t sound like such a bad idea. I walked up and down the Prado, and then met a friend for dinner/drinks at a nice little lounge restaurant. I’ve discovered that altitude really does have an effect on tolerance - let’s just say I was “happy” on two glasses of wine spaced out over 3 hours. Also, a guy who looks like Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (picture bleach blonde spiky hair) tried to pick me up with a poem written on a page ripped out of an E. E. Cummings book. While he gets points for creativity, I’ll let you judge the quality of the work…here it is for your reading pleasure:

“Relentless sky, river of crystal, rain of life, tease the sick, cure the rotten, flow of light, carriage of old red hair, beast of a deranged, and happy lives, cream of prosperity, seed of wealth and sand, crop over the machine, dance with the naked, destroy all cannon (word?), live with cracked walls and heavenly cockroaches spinning heads of mad holy magicians, into a path of thick forests and orgies with an abundance of wine and taste of sweat, bleak- scorn, bliss, laughter of chaotic disasters all in a beautiful mess.”

After dinner I met up with some other friends who had invited me to go to a “bolinche”, which I think is the word here for dance club/bar. It was already pretty late at that point, but I was really curious to see what a club might be like on the Wednesday night of school vacation. After wandering around Sopocachi in the freezing weather, we finally came to the place. It was supposedly “full of people”, but when we got inside there was a very disappointing lack of people dancing to the blaring techno. But after a while they started playing reggaeton, and my little group of five girls started to dance (as fun as sitting on a couch can be) while everyone else, which at that point was primarily 18 year old boys, sat around and stared at the wall. I have never felt so old in my life. Contrast a classy dinner with a club full teenagers…and then I get really confused when I remember that most of them are around my age.

So to that, add getting told that I couldn’t volunteer for a Spanish NGO, and talking to a dermatologist in the Hospital Militar, and that was my day. Also, I think I may have had a minor, minor, minor reaction to some “queso del campo” (farmer’s cheese, which tastes a bit like feta but is more salty and more rubbery) that I bought on the street the other day, but nothing that could keep me down (clearly).

First day (or not) of work

By the title of this post I'm sure that you can already guess that my first day of "work" was a bit of a bust. I shouldn’t have assumed that I (or any place I was working for) was going to get it right the first time, but there goes my naivety again. I guess I had idealized the experience because I had absolutely no idea what it would be like, so when no one handed me something on a silver plate (of course), I momentarily lost the feeling of stability that I’ve built, finally, as I’ve become accustomed to this city and people.

They had told me to arrive at 8:00am around an office – of course no one was there until about 8:30, so I spent a while wandered around the outdoor buildings looking for the doctors I had met. I finally decided to sit down and wait by the “jefe’s” office, and at about 8:45 he rolled in with his baby on his hip and gave me a “So why aren’t you ready?” look. I threw my lab coat over my jacket (it was about 25 degrees yesterday morning), and then without saying much of anything he shooed me into a room full of about 20 residents and nurses. My only introduction was a whispered “This is a biology student from the United States,” and then I was left on my own as everyone in the room eyed me cautiously and then proceeded to completely ignore me. There were several sick beds and it looked like there was a doctor making rounds as students presented the cases, but I couldn’t see the doctor or the patients, I couldn’t hear what anyone was saying, or much less understand the medical terminology in Spanish. Even if it had been in English, I think I would have been incredibly lost.

From the beginning my mind was screaming “What am I doing here…GET OUT!” – not so much in reaction to the patients, but rather to the lack of any personal contact or interest whatsoever. After about 20 minutes I decided I had had enough – I ran into the “jefe” and explained to him that I was confused, and he told me “Oh, I thought you would observe the cases and take down the ones you thought were most interesting.” Obviously there was a breakdown in communication, because I haven’t been exposed to medicine like this before, and I was really hoping for one-on-one contact with a doctor. I decided to go find the original doctor, but he was either not there or busy. At that point I was faced with a really hard decision of a) stay and be confused and unhappy but maybe find something eventually or b) get out and come back tomorrow while you think of and look at other options. Obviously I chose the latter.

Where to go from here. I would be lying if I didn’t say that right afterwards I almost asked for a plane ticket home. In all honesty I question whether I’m actually cut out to deal with this sort of work, whether I can match the analytical tendencies of my brain with something more social. I’m lacking everything that I rely on to get my by in the US – communication skills, a structured project, guidance – and here people don’t give a crap whether you have this and that award, a high GPA, or that you’re going to a great school in Chicago. (Where is that again?) I'm not sure I have the personal skills to prove my worth without all of that, nor the patience to wait things out and try over and over again when it isn’t a perfect fit.

But there’s definitely something inside of me that won’t let me give up. While I’m certainly thinking about the “investment” of flying here (the money, taking a haitus from my lab work, the nightly anxiety attacks that I'm giving to my parents), I’m also thinking "Sheesh, I’ve never done anything like this..." And I want to prove to myself that I CAN. Thus this crazy, solitary adventure that is simultaneously building me up and tearing me down.

So I guess the conclusion is (for all of you who have seen Finding Nemo) “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming…”

The Fair of El Alto

My new La Paz-ian friend Karim took me up to "La Feria de El Alto" - I’ve felt overwhelmed walking through the Upper Markets in the city, but this fair makes them all seem tiny in comparison. I met her on the San Francisco Plaza and we jumped into a mini-bus that was headed up the Auto-Pista, a long and narrow highway that winds around the Paceña beer factory and a huge forest of Eucalyptus trees on the climb up to El Alto. After a 20 minute ride, the mini-bus let us off at the side of the street and we climbed an incredibly steep set of mud stairs to get to the main altiplano fair ground, passing all sorts of vendors perched on the hillside. I was literally about to fall to the ground after about 30 stairs - the change in altitude was unmistakable, my ears were popping and I had the same, strange headache as when I first came to La Paz.









We started out on what Karim described as “the poor side”, which was filled with hundreds of ramshackle tents selling all sorts of goods from used bathrobes to naked Barbie dolls. We wove our way through the crowds in search of a hat for me (I was stupid enough to think that sunscreen alone would protect my skin from the blinding rays on the altiplano, no such luck) and a jacket for Karim. I ended up buying a black cowboy hat, which prompted several young kids to say “Un vacquero!” (A cowboy) as I walked by.















On our way to “the rich side” we passed by a central plaza, actually the area where cars are sold, that had a giant statue in the middle. There was also a sort of steep concrete structure that a bunch of kids has converted into a slide, which looked awesome, and if I were younger I would have joined in.







We continued walking around the fair for about three hours, passing through the areas that sold clothing, bags, shoes, car parts, you name it. I bought a brand new fleece for $4, a barely used computer bag for $1.50, and the cowboy hat was about $1. The amount of used clothing is unbelievable –huge bags of it come in from the US (I guess from places like Good Will) and are sold in the street markets here. Apparently they have been trying to pass a law for some years that, in an attempt to develop the Bolivian clothing industry, would stop the importation of foreign clothing, but I think that “law” has been in place for quite some time with no changes being made.











[The main drag in El Alto]



Far and away, the food continues to leave the biggest impression on me. There are people on the streets selling dough balls, pineapple slices, a drink made from water and dried peaches, and there are also tents selling fruit juices, fried sardine-like fish, chunks of meat, and potato-corn soups. Karim was on a mission to have me try some of her favorite “comida de la calle” (street food), which left me feeling a bit terrified, especially after seeing the giant vats used to cook who knows what kind of meat. But I did end up trying a food called “pesque”, which is basically a quinoa mash served with milk and “queso del campo” (farmers cheese), and it was very tasty, although I was convinced I was going to get food poisoning afterwards (I didn’t).













The air was a bit hazy in the morning, but in the afternoon as we were coming back down the sky was a perfectly clear hue of baby blue. Looking out for a view of the entire canyon full of the brick houses and curving roads was one of the most incredible sights I have ever seen in my life.









[Illimani]







We also had to cross a footbridge and climb down a very steep hillside to get back to the minibuses.

Me Speaky English

The other day I was waiting for my friend Karim and her son on the Plaza San Francisco, a beautiful colonial church set smack in front of the busiest, most congested area of the Prado. As I was sitting on the front steps watching the foreigners, the traffic, the shoeshine boys carrying their black boxes and wearing their black face-masks, I noticed a group of 4 teenagers approaching me. I was pretty convinced that they were going to try to rob me, and as they asked me, hesitantly, if I spoke English, I instinctively clutched my bag closer to my body and gave a noncommittal reply and tried to look away like I do when street vendors ask me to buy candy or fruit. But as soon as they heard me speak English, they excitedly huddled in a circle around me, whipped out a tape recorder, and asked me if they could do an interview for a school project. I was still thinking “huh?”, but as soon as I saw them reading off of questions they had scribbled onto a notebook, I started to relax a little bit. It turns out they needed to interview people so that their teacher could analyze it, and I ended up talking with them for about 20 minutes, on the steps of the Plaza, as everyone else looked on curiously and eavesdropped. .

Them: “Which is your fav-or-ite city?”
Me: “Here, in Bolivia?”
Them: “Yes.”
Me: “Well, La Paz”
Them: “Ohhhh!!! …why?”
Me: “Um…I guess I like the Andes?”

And I conveniently left out that I hadn’t really visited any other place in Bolivia…yet. They really seemed fascinated when I started to talk (slowly) about the differences between La Paz and Chicago. One girl, clearly very bright, kept trying to ask me extra questions that she didn’t quite know how to formulate, so with a combination of English and Spanish I was able understand what she wanted me to say.

At the end of my “interview”, I asked them if they’d had a lot of trouble finding other people to talk with – turns out they had only successfully found one other person who spoke English and German, and no Spanish – which makes a lot of sense to me because, as I tried to explain to them, most people were probably suspicious of a group of four kids wandering around and asking questions like that. It’s really heartbreaking to me that my first impulse when I saw these kids was to protect my belongings and hope that I didn’t get robbed. I felt sort of horrible afterwards, because they were friendly and so clearly trying hard to make a connection with foreigners, which is actually quite rare here. I find myself behaving with such a delicate balance of respectful appreciation (and distance) and also wariness, and I hate that more often than not the distrust takes over