A Thousand Words

Pictures pictures pictures! In spite of not having a real kind of job, my life-pace is quickly gaining speed as I continue to settle in to Bolivian life. Here are some photos I snapped of random happenings that I felt were worth mentioning.


This is Kodi getting some lovin. Like most wonderful dogs he loves to run around in the dirt as soon as he gets a bath, so really this is a rather futile attempt, but fun nonetheless. That´s Jonny on the left, Kodi´s dad. He´s one of the sons of Doña Mary, who I rent from, and he loves karaoke. The other day we sang a duet by Romeo Santos and Usher... it was one of the more awkward-yet-culturally appropriate moments of the past month and I promised myself I would never tell anyone about it... soooo don´t tell anyone.



Here´s the main house. My room is directly to the left of the camera, but I spend a good deal of time in this little courtyard hanging out and traumatizing the parrots, who can been glimpsed in their cage on the right.











This is a road. It has gates leading to homes. And if you follow it long enough you´ll reach those mist-covered mountains, where you´re just as likely to stumble across wild llamas, waterfalls, or cocaine farmers in equal proportion. Although the waterfalls are easiest to find because they tend to stay in one place.








An apartment complex currently under construction across the street from my house. Like all individuals who have an insatiable desire to get to the top of things, I wanted to sneak onto the roof of this building to admire the view, but was advised against it by every single person I mentioned the idea to. Hmmm... I guess I´ll have to go at night.






This is Hiroshi. Grandson to Doña Mary and bane of my existence. Don´t be fooled by his I-had-two-mimosas-for-breakfast grin, he´s really quite the little curb-stomping gangster. The other day he swatted me with a fly swatter. A fly swatter. Those things have germs. After disarming him and swinging him around in the air a while to show my disproval I think he finally got the message and has learned to fear me.






Okay this picture´s not all that funny. Well... I guess it could be depending on your level of personal nurture and parental love... but for the sake of argument we´ll just say it´s not all that funny. But don´t worry, it wasn´t my blood. I went out the other night with some friends and after a hilarious night of dancing we were about ready to make our way home. By this time it was late, again for the sake of argument let´s just say it was between 10:30 and 6:00, and one of the guys in our party decides instead of taking a taxi home, which is cheap and infinitely more secure than walking, he´s going to... yep... walk. To complicate matters he´s also somewhat intoxicated, which doesn´t help in the whole avoding-robbery/murder scenario. He takes off, and after a somewhat hurried discussion I take off after him with another friend while the rest of the group makes their way home.
We made it about a block and a half when suddenly we hear a girl screaming her head of, crying, and asking for help all at the same time. (I marvel at how some people can do this) As we round the corner we see three guys pinning another guy to a wall and laying into his face with their fists. (why in the world can´t i just say fighting? there were three guys fighting another guy... nnnoooo i´ve got to sound creative with the whole laying into face thing... what is that? imagery? well it´s poor imagery if anything and i should be ashamed) Anyway, even though our friend was still off wondering by his lonesome, I wasn´t about to let some guy´s chances of having a full set of teeth be ruined by one night´s drunken brawl, so without further ado I started hollering (it´s good to sound like you´re mad in these sorts of situations) and hauling guys off of mr. punching bag. The fight broke up momentarily as my buddy and I tried to figure out what was going on, but just as things seemed like they were going to settle down two of tender meat´s friends came rushing around the corner and suddenly the playing field was leveled and a proper brawl could ensue. Sorry mom for the language but I clearly remember at that exact moment thinking, ¨well shit.¨
Even though I was actively restraining one of the original beater-uppers, one of the friends of the victim rushes up to me and without even a hello punches me in the nose. I know right? The gall of some people... not even a ¨how´s your night going¨ or ¨hey i´m about to try to hurt you.¨
Well, needless to say this presented me with a moral conundrum, what with my pacifistic tendencies and all. Although I should clarify that even though his intention may have been to bash mr. gringo (that´s me) in the face it turned out to be more of a flail, and the extent of my injuries didn´t range beyond something you´d receive while dancing in a mosh pit at an Insane Clown Posse concert (not that I´ve ever been to one of their shows, no no no, i have standards). My nose was fine and if anything was injured it probably should have been his pride at throwing such a weak punch. At that moment I thought about giving him a bro hug in case he was feeling ashamed about his previous attempt at injuring me, but I figured the safer, and probably more universally appropriate thing to do would be to avoid further interaction.
I explained I didn´t want to fight him (which wasn´t true, i actually kind of did because i was pretty sure that would be an easy WIN in my book) and that I was helping his friend. After some more name-calling and head-butting and punch-throwing and courage-mustering the brawl started to ease into more of a scuffle, and then into something quite similar to football players congratulating each other after a touchdown. The two groups took off in opposite directions and my friend and I were left standing in the street surrounded by our own amazement... and the girl. Yeah she was still there, still crying, and still visibly shaken from the whole previous experience. In between feeling my nose to make sure it wasn´t bleeding I managed to figure out where she lived, and to make a much longer story somewhat shorter, we eventually managed to find a taxi and get her home safely.
So I think that´s a happy ending. I was wondering, like any conservatively educated Christian, What Jesus Would Do (WJWD right right?) to break up a fight. I imagine he probably would have been much more creative. I can see him singing, or perhaps walking on one of the puddles of rainwater that were collecting in the street (unfortunately i can´t do either of those things). Maybe he would have drawn in the dirt or shared a parable that would have confused everyone into thoughtful reflection. But I don´t know... maybe he would have yelled and hauled guys off of each other and taken a lame punch in the nose. That´d be cool. I doubt it but that´d be cool.

Either way I´m reminded that it´s hard to love people sometimes. People are stupid. Granted, that is just one of many characteristics that also include beautiful, brave, mysterious, and Christlike, but still. We tend to do stupid things. And in the midst of those stupid things, those poor decisions, I find myself continually learning how to love well. Even though I totally suck at it most times, in my little self-satisfying sort of ways, it´s a challenge, and one I am quite happy to spend the remainder of my years pursuing.

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The Rose is without why
She blooms because she blooms
She does not care for herself
Asks not if she is seen.
~Angelus Silesius

I went to some kind of hipster party the other weekend. The night started when I got a call at about 10:30 from someone who clearly knew me well:
"Hey Bryan, I'm at this party. You should come. Here I'll give the phone to someone who can give you directions."

After listening to someone rattle off directions in Spanish that included, "turn right after the green gate," and "once you find such-n-such a street, keep going 2 blocks and turn left when you see a wall," I realized I was probably never going to actually make it to the party.

Nevertheless adventure beckoned.

So after driving around with a more than amiable taxi driver, to my utter surprise I actually found the house. Don't think I'm taking creative liberties here, I had put my chances at less than favorable and yet somehow managed to find the right place. I suppose maybe that's divine humor right there... Leaving taxi man with a nice tip I passed through the gate of a compound up in the hills and found myself instantly transported to some house in Orange County. The driveway consisted of some kind of imported grass that was more or less able to withstand vehicles, and as I rounded the corner I found myself looking at a nicely heated pool, the kind that doesn't have edges so the water is perfectly level with the ground (what do they call those, infinity pools?) set beneath a beautifully decorated wooden patio. The entire back wall of the house was glass, providing its occupants with a wonderful view of Cochabamba but also creating a really creepy voyeuristic feeling in every single one of the more than 20 rooms where the curtains weren't drawn. If Cochabamba ever got cold I couldn't imagine what the heating bill would be. As I stood there gaping a nicely groomed Labrador trotted past me...

...with a monkey on its back.

Are you picking up what I'm putting down yet? Swanky does not begin to describe it. I mean... they had monkeys... who does that in real life? Not the big ones that have to wear diapers and fling poo at you when you're not looking, but the cute little spider monkeys that only want to be held and fed grapes.

I threaded my way through the assorted hipsters who were milling out in the yard, each one sporting assorted varieties of black horn-rimmed glasses, shoulder tattoos, v-neck shirts, scarves, skinny jeans, and creative facial piercings. Someone put some sort of beverage in my hand and I was off and running... milling with the best of them, pretending like I was totally used to having parties at glass houses on the hills of Cochabamba. Someone was grilling up assorted bits of meat and passing them out to whomever was hungry, as I swung by the grill I half expected to find an ostrich wearing an apron, but alas, it was just another dude with carefully messy hair and interesting-looking tattoos.

The night went well for the next several hours, I fed pieces of fruit to aforementioned monkeys and chatted with some very lovely Bolivian girls who, I'm sure, where very much interested in my personality and spiritual views.

The rest of the night was fairly uneventful... eventually cocaine showed up and I was tired anyway and decided it was probably best to say my goodbyes.

As I made my way past the shnazzy pool and out the well manicured driveway I couldn't help but marvel at the similarities between people around the world. Here in this place, where poverty is ever-more apparent and that much more difficult to ignore there are still those who work hard at living their utopian dream. (we call that a dystopian dream actually ;)

Being a Christian really forces one to redefine the world's concept of "having a good time." I enjoy a nice gathering of folks as much as the next guy, but I suppose if I want to live responsibly, or at least in a way that glorifies God, it would do me well to remember that even as I celebrate there are those who suffer, and as much as I can, my place is more closely with them. More and more I am learning that the trick to life is learning how to rejoice in the midst of suffering... which is not what this post is about whatsoever, but what is nevertheless a crucial aspect of my existence. Hmph... well that thought ended things abruptly.

Things I Continue To Learn

My apologies, dear reader. This particular post is designed to help me look back on my time in Bolivia and remember what was. It's primarily for my sake. Nevertheless, here are some things that have inspired me lately...

All that we wonder about and think and do is inevitably affected by the kinds of people we are, our temperaments, our histories, our surroundings, our limited horizons, our interests, fears, needs, and perversities. Sometimes these conditions are so pervasive that we even mistake them for Christianity itself… These continuing factors cannot be avoided. We cannot rise above them to gain absolute or universal truths, but we can acknowledge them and compensate for them as best we can.
We do so by fostering a certain modesty and self-awareness. We acknowledge that we are limited human beings who are always to some extent going to be wrong. But we compensate for this chiefly by opening ourselves up to as wide and varied a “community of disagreement” as we can find. It will be full of people as limited and conditioned and mistaken as we are, but fortunately they will be limited and conditioned and mistaken in different ways. If we open up to them, there is some hope that their insights, whatever their shortcomings and idiosyncrasies, will challenge and complement and correct ours and ours theirs, so that together the questions we ask and the insights we bring to bear and the conclusions we reach will be more adequate than had we been left to ourselves. (Not Angels But Agencies, Michael Taylor pp. 131-132)

Totally conscious, and apropos of nothing, you come to see me.
Is someone here? I ask.
The moon. The full moon is inside your house.

My friends and I go running out into the street.
I’m in here, comes a voice from the house, but we aren’t listening.
We’re looking up at the sky.
My pet nightingale sobs like a drunk in the garden.
Ringdoves scatter with small cries, Where, Where.
It’s midnight. The whole neighborhood is up and out
in the street thinking, The cat burglar has come back.
The actual thief is there too, saying out loud,
Yes, the cat burglar is somewhere in this crowd.
No one pays attention.

Lo, I am with you always means when you look for God,
God is in the look of your eyes,
in the thought of looking, nearer to you than your self,
or things that have happened to you
There’s no need to go outside.

Be melting snow.
Wash yourself of yourself.

A white flower grows in the quietness.
Let your tongue become that flower.

~Rumi

Chance had cast me on his island, chance had thrown me in his arms. In a world of chance, is there a better and a worse? We yield to a stranger’s embrace or give ourselves to the waves; for the blink of an eyelid our vigilance relaxes; we are asleep; and when we awake, we have lost the direction of our lives. ~ Susan Barton (Foe)

I ask you to remember, not every man who bears the mark of the castaway is a castaway at heart. ~ Cruso (Foe)

“Your master is dead, Friday,” I whispered.
Friday lay in his little recess wrapped in the old watch-coat the surgeon had found for him. His eyes glinted in the candlelight but he did not stir. Did he know the meaning of death? No man had died on his island since the beginning of time. Did he know we were subject to death, like the beasts? I held out a hand but he would not take it. So I knew he knew something; though what he knew I did not know. ~ Susan Barton (Foe)

Sometimes I wake up not knowing where I am. The world is full of islands, said Cruso once. ~ Foe

There comes a time when we must give reckoning of ourselves to the world, and then forever after be content to hold our peace. ~ Foe

We are accustomed to believe that our world was created by God speaking the Word; but I ask, may it not rather be that he wrote it, wrote a Word so long we have yet to come to the end of it? May it not be that God continually writes the world, the world and all that is in it? ~ Foe

Quietness

Inside this new love, die.
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now.
You’re covered with thick cloud.
Slide out the side. Die,
and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign
that you’ve died.
Your old life was a frantic running
from silence.

The speechless full moon
comes out now.

~Rumi

For many many years I feel as though my life has been a frantic running from silence. It's when I move to other countries, when I find I can't easily communicate with others, when my days and nights aren't constantly filled with this party and that gathering that I begin to slow down.

This is when I become spiritual.

To love life and all of its messiness, this is a gift.

This Thing That Happened

It´s not that I don´t like maps, I just can´t stand to be seen looking at a map in public. Maybe I´m prideful, maybe I ascribe too heavily to the gender role that suggests that men should be good at navigating. I really don´t know. But regardless of the reasons I committed my route to memory, grabbed my phone and a little cash, and was out the door. My goal for the day was to walk to La Cancha, the largest outdoor market in South America (dare I say the entire Americas). It was a good 20 blocks away through a somewhat complex system of turns and twists but me being the sharp nugget that I am I had the whole area memorized pretty thoroughly...

...after about 3 blocks I was thoroughly lost. Okay I wasn´t lost... come on... no I just wasn´t entirely sure I was going in the right direction. I was pretty sure I was heading west/southwest but the roads kept veering. Damn roads... they looked pretty straight on the map.

I don´t know how, it was something quite similar to Wendy and the boys making it to Neverland, but suddenly I rounded a corner and Bam! there it was, in all its congested glory. LA CANCHA!

I´m not going to waste time trying to describe how big this market is. Just imagine something stupidly big, like the size of the Enterprise, and then double that and you´re probably close. It´s big. I spent 2 or 3 hours just walking... just walking from end to end and then back and then through and then around and then through again. They sell new bikes, and then next to them they sell giant barrells, and then next to them they sell shoes, and then next to them they sell soap, and then next to them they sell puppies, and then next to them they sell picture frames, and then next to them they sell spaghetti scoopers, and then next to them they sell butchered goats, and then next to them.... well... you probably get the idea. The range of smells alone was enough to make me feel like I had traveled to another planet. There was just so so much crammed together, so much sweat and soda and blood and dish water and HUMANITY! As I walked between the stalls I offered up every part of me that wanted to recoil in delicate sensitivity and told myself, ¨this is what the world is like, this is how people live who aren´t like you.¨ It literally took my breath.

On my way out I was just reemerging from La Cancha and pointed towards the direction of home when the darndest thing happened. It was crowded, as I´ve already said, and I was walking in something of a single file line with cars passing me on the right and a row of vendors on my left when suddenly the man walking in front of me abruptly turned around. At first I thought he had forgotten something and just wanted to walk in the opposite direction, but as I made to squeeze by him he suddenly put his shoulder into my chest just as another man came up behind me and did the same to my back. There I was, in something of a gringo sandwich, and quickly trying to figure out what was going on. After only a brief moment it was over, and the man who had turned around brushed passed me and began to move on. I hadn´t felt a thing, but I knew something was wrong. Quickly I reached into my left pocket and sure enough, the space where my phone had been was now completly empty. It was gone.

At this point in the story I grow a little embarassed, because there´s a ton of things I would say I would do in this kind of situation, and then there is the thing I actually did. Without another thought I spun around and grabbed the guy who had just brushed past me. I wrapped my left arm around his neck and shoulders and grabbed his right arm with mine, and in perfectly loud English said to him, ¨Hey! Give me back my phone!¨

The man twisted around in my arms and gave me a look of utter surprise. His buddy, who was right behind him looked at me and said in Spanish, ¨that guy, that guy over there¨ and pointed to a third man who was walking away. I almost fell for it. I was so confused and disoriented that I thought maybe it had been passed off and this other guy did have my phone. But then I looked down at the man´s hands who I was still holding on to. His right hand, of which I had grabbed with my right hand, was balled up in a fist, but his left hand was concealed underneath a jacket that he had drapped over it. And it was then that I knew without a doubt he still had my phone. Again I said to him, still in English because my brain couldn´t catch up, ¨Hey man! Give me back my phone!¨ This whole time I´m pretty sure I was smiling at the ridiculousness of it all, but I think perhaps he mistook my goofy grin for the look of a maniacle mad man because ever so slowly he raised up his left hand, almost as though it were and offering, and there, clasped tightly in his hot little hand, was my phone.

I grabbed it out of his hand and as if that were the signal the two men tore off running in the opposite direction. I stood there in the middle of the street holding my phone as I watched the two men run away. For a second I wondered what I was supposed to do, I literally thought to myself, ¨Okay, what is culturally appropriate right now?¨ I thought about running after them but I didn´t really know why, I mean, I already had my phone, I thought about yelling for someone to stop them but I didn´t really want them to get caught, because that would probably mean their lives would be in danger (mob justice is swift here, I´m serious) so i just stood there surpressing a laugh. By now a small group had formed around me of curious and confused onlookers who were wondering why I had just stolen what was apparently that guys phone and then convinced him to run away. I took my phone back out of my pocket and said to the crowd, ¨MY phone¨ and the realization struck them all instantly.

I left the group gasping and chatting amongst themselves and continued on home, so completely pumped by what had just happened. I felt like a freaking superhero! In my head I replayed the scene where the guy had come at me with a knife and I had deflected it with my super-strong wrist guards and then tossed him into a vegetable cart. Then I recalled doing a backflip over the guy behind me and knocking his legs out from under him. I came to when I realized that in reality, it was just two guys who were trying to make some easy money who probably had family´s of their own to feed.

If I had been thinking would I have done something different? Yeah. Probably. Did it work out? Fortunately it did, at least for me anyway. Do I wish I could have known those guys? That I could have given them something for their efforts? Actually, yeah... I kinda do... I kinda do...


If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. - The Bible (somewhere)

Good Game, Good Game

After several initially hesitant weeks in Cochabamba, my stomach has finally settled in and realized I´m not going anywhere soon. With a cooperative body in tow, I have tentatively begun trying out more of the local foods with a lesser degree of fear that I´ll be ruined if I eat anything too suspicious. Nevertheless I´ve still been exceedingly tired these last several days. My daily schedule usually consist of an inadvertant wake up call at 7:15 from Hiroshi, the youngest member of the household here, who likes to go whizzing past my door on his little push-car as soon as he wakes up. He´s two. If he were ANY older I´d certainly have to be mad, but his cuteness just barely edges out my seething anger so I usually wake up with a smile as I hear him whirring around out in the courtyard. I guess I also hesitate to interfere because Kodi usually gets pretty excited to see little Hiroshi flying around on his car and it only takes a few moments before Kodi knocks Hiroshi over in his excitement to play with someone his size. I don´t know why but that makes me laugh every time I hear it from my comfy (yet overly small) bed.

So with Hiroshi crying inside the main house I get up and go eat breakfast at 7:30. After a couple hours of Spanish vocab review and whatnot my official tutoring begins around 10:00 and goes until 12:30 where we pause for lunch. At 1:30 classes begin again until 3:00. Right around 3:15 I´m usually so exhausted I´ve barely waved goodbye to my tutor Alejandro when I stumble back into my room, shut the door, shut the window, and fall back into bed. Since napping in the prime of one´s youth still feels like a sin I usually can´t manage to fall asleep, but I lay there long enough for the headache to subside. My evenings are then filled with random events: volleyball down the street with some family members, a trek to the bookstore to see if they have anything new, a visit to the internet café (like what i´m doing now), or perhaps a trip out to see Rachel and Dan. I´ve also finally managed to meet some other foreigners who live in the city and may end up spending time with them as well.

Anyway, the whole point of that little diddly was that I´ve been feeling tired a lot. I concluded that this 4 hours a day of Spanish was behind it, so I´ve decided to cut it down to 2 hours of official study per day, with whatever additional studying I can do on the side. Aside from not destroying my tired brain, that´ll also save me a good bit of money, which is always helpful when you´ve adopted the life of a vagabond.

Last night we were graced with an impromptu fireworks show that originated about 3 houses down from ours. These weren´t the 4th of July kind that we are all used to, these were the mostly-illegal-in-the-US kind that set off car alarms and shake windows. I saw Kodi once and then he was gone. I´m guessing he was under a bed somewhere, but he was certainly not a fan. Laying on my bed flipping through the book I was supposed to be paying attention to I was struck by the sounds of the fireworks over my head. It sounded like a warzone, and if I let myself I could feel a tinge of fear that must be just a fraction of what living in a place like that must be like. I don´t really know how to describe the experience any better than that.

I´m also trying to think of some plans for the Holidays. I´m not planning on being back in the states so the next best option is to go on some sort of adventure. Traveling to Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego would be the highlight, but that´s a little out of my price range right now I think. I could also go to La Paz, or to the famous salt flats in Uyuni. I have to think about these things, and even verbalize them, or my introverted self will find contentment in sipping some wine and watching a movie for Christmas. Not bad at all actually, but I think there are some better options out there.

And in other news, at dinner the other night I had just finished clearing my dishes from the table and was on my way to the kitchen when Tía Sarah gave me a ¨nice play¨ butt slap right out of the blue. I don´t know if she thought we were in the middle of a soccer game or what, but she´s definitely gone back onto my ¨don´t find yourself alone in a room with this person¨ list. And believe me... that´s quite a list.

Love you all, sleep tight.

A List

Things that surprise me about Bolivia:

- Joni Mitchell, Phil Collins, and Cat Stevens are all WAY more popular here. If you aren´t listening to spanish rap-hop in a taxi, then it´s probably one of these musical geniusi. ¡Bien Hecho!
- People dress nicer than I do.
- Not everyone is good at soccer.
- Wives will not tolerate cheating husbands.
- There really ARE rabid dogs.
- Alcoholism is no joke.
- My height draws more stares than the color of my skin.
- They have their own version of Judge Judy meets Jerry Springer called Caso Cerrado. And it´s awesome.
- Blowing things up is a national pasttime. Usually it´s just fireworks.
- You can´t hear any freeways at night.
- Beds come in two sizes: Small and Smaller.
- Pillows come in one size: Lumpy.
- People usually prefer to help you over taking your money.
- It´s really not all that different.