Leaps and Bounds

When in a hurry a steep paceñan downhill is an insurpassable ally, but that ally can become a fatal enemy if one lacks proper hussle equipment. Exceptional traction on the toes of your shoes is crucial to survival in La Paz. It should be placed in the category of ¨requiremed equipment¨ on any basic travel list designed for destinees of La Paz. Just as a seatbelt in a car is insufficient to save a driver or passenger´s life, however, so is good shoe traction for a pedestrian in La Paz. Prevention via diligence and vigilance are also crucial. When reaching the crux between a steep downhill slope and flat road, a controlled screeching halt is the crucial buffer between yourself and the runaway traffic. So far as I am aware pedestrians have yet to score a victory in the battle of runaway cars vs. runaway legs. Until that victory is scored, good traction is a necessary emergency break.

Just two days ago I found myself bounding down such a hill. The hill from home to the central downtown area. To try and put into perspective the grade of incline/decline from our home to the nearest flat road below, it is a hill that takes 12 minutes to climb up, and only 4 minutes to fly down at a hurry. Sometimes the difference between our leg size slips Eli´s mind and I have to remind him his flying downhill La Paz stride is a slight jog for me.

As I reached the bottom of the hill two days ago, a maniac taxi rounding the corner causes me to put into use my shoes super-runner-grip power as I slide along the slippery pavement and just barely avoid tumbling head first off the curb. Enough of a speedy recovery allowed me the leisure time to observe the taxi driver excessively honk at a pedestrian with unfortunate street-crossing timing. I notice the pedestrian wave in apology and jog out of the way. The taxi accelerates away and I notice the pedestrian is a traffic cop. Perhaps only in La Paz would the taxi driver have authority over a traffic cop.

Being a pedestrian in La Paz provides myriad opportunities for reflecting on the capricious taste of death, and the corresponding unpredictable nature of life. Multiple such encounters a day remind me of the preciousness of life. This relatively minor incident gave me the following fresh insight on my passion for life in La Paz: it is feasible the invigoration that jolts me into action each morning is the by-product of such consistent mingling with death and illness. To see the elephant from this point of view for the first time makes the elephant seem a different animal entirely. This thought provoked me to interpret the culture of world travel and professional scallawags from a fresh vantage point as well. The reality that dedicated world travelers create and thrive upon is one where instability in day-to-day life is used as the foil to intensifiy the vibrancy of life. That is why similar to those lost in the additction to methamphetamines, one can become addicted to travel: it enhances the vivid joys of the quotidian and can leave the unprepared depressed and strung out on boredom when forced to return to a normative life.

I spell it Tiwanaku, you spell it Tiahuanacu

Two years ago I learned of a pre-Incan conquest civilazation spelled ¨Tiahuanacu¨. Soon after I saw the alternate spelling of ¨Tiwanaku¨. Capriciously and with all the haughtiness of a gringo foreigner with a residence card in a country where passing-through gringo tourists receive a plethora of smirks, I stroked my own ego by immediately writing off the alternate spelling as the anglicized version for the ¨less savvy¨. Karma stuck to the responsibilities outlined in her job-description, however, when soon after we were told both spellings emerged amognst the SPanish colonizers at the same time. In all my willingness to judge others based an assumption I knew the ¨right way¨ and others did not, I forgot that neither spelling has a native origin.

There is no way to spell ¨Tiahuanacu¨ that does not remind the word is one designed by colonizers, that either way spelled, the ancient ruins that the word ¨Tiahuanacu¨ designates, are there because of conquest and because of lack of resources to maintain or restore the ancient city. Not more than once have I in fact been told there is sufficient belief amongst archeologists and anthroplogists a fair amount of the original city remains unexcavated beneath the hard altiplano earth. The principal reason it remains unexcavated is lack of national resources to complete the project and lack of external interest in funding such a project. Bah-Humbug!

On a more serious note, I would like to share a deeper impact visiting the ruins had on me. After five hours absorbing the subtle complexities of the pre-Incan ruins at Tiahuanacu, my imaginations reached their apex with the realization as of yet, no build a Macchu-Picchu Theme Park exists. How has humanity come this far, created so many theme and water parks, and not even one Peak Picchu grand drop slide has been created?

On a Tuesday morning Eli and I hit the snooze button at 7:10 AM. Somehow I managed to get up and perhaps more impressively managed to also get Eli up and out the door by 7:40 am. The adventure started at the Cemetary where micro-buses leave to Tiahuanacu daily. Even knowing that much can save a gringo up to thirty dollars who might otherwise pay for transport through a tourist country. Thanks again, Lonely Planet Guides and local knowledge from giving me survival techniques to avoid tourist traps.

Even though the van ride is only an hour and fifteen minutes or so, several delays waiting for passangers, etc., made it a 2.5 hour trip. Now that I think about it, maybe for some travellers that is why they are willing to pay to go with a tourist company, to avoid the ordeal of transportation. For me, however, getting there I find as educational as being there.

By 11:30 AM Eli and I found ourselves in uneloquent protest of the foreigner-entrance-tax, a 700% increase on the entrance fee. Final word was the guards, since we had no proof of residence, we would get no reduction. Damn I want that resident card I had last time! Eventually mere frustration with cyclical communication inspired Eli and I to concede, pay, and enter. But we didn't let ourselves get completely shat on, we made sure to flash our class and tact by muttering mean things in English. Almost as honorable and classy as the Italian who entered the museum after us while smoking a cigarette.

To Be Continued. . .

Good Morning (Latin) America!

Every weekday morning I anoint with adventure as I relocate from my home on Calle General Lanza in La Paz to my home on Calle Siete in El Alto in an hour long passage. El Alto is the uncontested bearer of the title, “most problematic city in Bolivia”. Quite a title since Bolivia is one of the most historically problematic countries in one of the most historically problematic continents of the world. Mayor of El Alto Pep Lucho should be grateful this title remains undisputed. Otherwise Bolivia could very-well be on the path to a national coup and lock/down as recently happened in a maximum security women’s prison in Brazil during disagreements about the true winner of the “Miss Prison 2006” Pageant.

At an altitude of 4082 meters, “El Alto”, or, “The Height”, is a quintessentially pragmatic city name. To give a more concrete idea of how high that is, it is 482 meters above La Paz (3600 meters), 656 meters above the peak of Mt. Hood (3426 meters), and 973 meters above Leadville, the tallest town in Colorado (3109 meters). A swift jaunt up a flight of stairs in El Alto steals the breath. All the way down the throat to the solar plexus protests the climatic deprivation during the subsequent period of desperate gasping for depleted oxygen atoms. Living many meters below in La Paz means my lungs never will fully adjust to the thinner, colder air of El Alto. Neither is any amount or strength of sunblock sufficient in preventing my cheeks from turning the dry raw puffy red characteristic of the traditional indigenous aesthetic. With too much exposure cheeks will easily turn painful and at times crack and bleed as the sun burns the flesh and blood rises to the surface to combat the biting cold, arid wind.

Each weekday morning at 8am I grab the cold handle and slam the door with all my might, a good hard boom of the door on the doorframe is the only way to get the deadbolt in the right position for locking. We have had three break-ins in our collective year here. Four iPods, a few cameras, and a sense of security were the losses. Never have I personally had anything stolen, and the break-ins have always occurred when I was still in the US or while traveling. Addition of more locks, changing existing locks, and shutting the door with gusto have kept us robber-free for 3 months.

The heavy dead crack crash of the door catalyzes my adrenaline into action. The shock serves as a motivational booster to initiate my game-plan to outwit the relentlessly vicious terrier Chiki. Most mornings Chiki’s ravenous appetite for Gringo calves remains unsatiated as I have recently perfected a combined strategy a precise backwards side-step and erratic meaningless waving of my hand low to the ground. If I could fashion a sophisticated enough zip-line it would then be about a 3 minutes descent onto the main promenade. But until I perfect that technology and get approval from the city, I will continue to have a brisk ten minute nearly uncontrolled scramble down to the main promenade, the Prado, to catch a minibus to El Alto.

I am going to make a culturally base comment here but one I know will communicate what I desire. Minibuses are what in the US commonly recognized as “Morman Family Vans”. Other than the occasional decal of the naked woman silhouette Morman Family Vans in La Paz are distinguished from their conventional role by serving as public, rather than family, transportation. Destinations are printed in block letters on laminated paper and displayed in the front windshield. In case my bleary morning eyes can´t catch the windshield display amidst the chaotic dodgy subterfuge of minibuses negotiating traffic (anti)patterns of La Paz in the AM, I can listen for my destination too. A ¨vocero¨shouts out the side window the prices and destinations. My ear is well-trained to distinguish the three syllable intonations of ¨La Ceja¨ from the myriad other destinations as well as the squacks of frustrated, ineffective traffic control cops. The Ceja means ¨The Eyebrow¨ and is so named because it is a sloped ridge that is an upper lip to the crater of La Paz and allows for a stunning view of the cluttered crater below.

Every morning I awake to the joltingly harsh beep of an alarm clock I will crave the gentle tune of ¨Onward Christian Soldiers¨ coming from my mothers mouth. When I step off a minibus in El Alto, a waft of chocolate deliciousness abates my resentment of the physical jolt the harsh cold delivers. An exponentially more profound jolt than that of a harsh beep. A cocoon of chocolate wonderfulness as I walk the frosty, foreign 8-blocks. Eli and I have yet to identify the chocolate factory but as soon as we do you can look forward to news of a gringo raid in an El Alto chocolate factory.

As I begin to walk I encounter people reading the headlines at newspaper stands, stink of urine from the nearby bridge, a crinkling cat of meat being fried in the shape of elephant ears, anonymous shoe-shiners that avoid social stigma under the cloth of a balaclava, a handcrafted traditional instrument store, squabbling Aymara-Spanish bilingual commerce at kiosks and carts, a building hidden behind a fence of corrugated metal I recognize as a school only because of the graffiti marking it the “Facultad de Ingeneria”, wild dogs and the occasional dead dog freshly frozen to death from the night before. I am grateful a frozen dead dog is the worst I have seen as two frozen dead children have been found in El Alto so far this winter. There is a statistic of 7-9 kids freezing to death on the streets of El Alto every winter.

After 8 blocks of these sights I arrive at the flimsy red metal door where I knock heavily to make sure the heavy eyed youth hear my arrival and come to the door for warm kisses on the cheeks and hugs. The first embrace penetrates the cocoon of chocolate warmth I invited as solace on the passage, transcending the sense of otherness, difference, and occasional hostility I felt in the 8-blocks. Since the first day I volunteered at Proyecto Por Un Mundo Mejor I have harbored internal conflicts about being a gringa meddling in a reality I will never truly comprehend. But I am passionate about learning what I can and helping in whatever ways I am asked without making any presumptive recommendations about ¨what´s best for the kids¨ (eg learning English, join a religion, shower 4 times a week, etc.).

Since a person cannot touch another without being themselves being touched, those individual embraces in the morning dissolve the cultural distances I feel. When I enter or leave a room of twenty or so people sometimes I end up mumbling like Milton curses at the cultural tradition of individual greetings of embraces. But the difference it makes in how I feel about my place in El Alto, makes me wonder if the imposition of such a tradition in the USA could help heal the sensation of racial and cultural hostility that haunts North American society. Not that hugs are the solution at all, but I think physical contact with someone you feel disconnected from or angry towards has beneficial returns of increased trust, concern, and appreciation.