The jungle where the Yurakaré indigenous tribe that I wanted to meet and make a short documentary on was unfortunately horribly flooded all week. It's rainy season, and it's relentless. Alan, the DELPIA Foundation's director, knew that I was disappointed about this, so he arranged for me to go with the new Korean architecture volunteer, Hyunjin, to a little town called Villa de Independencia that they do other projects in.
Independencia is about 7 hours away by bus. Or supposed to be. Wednesday morning Hyunjin and I met at the bus terminal at 7AM and prepared for the long journey ahead. As soon as we sat down and started moving forward, he was completely passed out, as I later found out that he is rather good at passing out on any surface whatsoever, but unfortunately I have never been lucky enough to be able to fall asleep on buses, cars, planes, anything. Having accepted this long ago, I brought a book and a little notebook to write letters in. Once we got outside the city, though, I didn't bother to open either of these, as the journey through the Andes mountains was absolutely breathtaking. I couldn't take my eyes off the passing landscapes out the window. Beautiful though it may be, I won't forget to mention that it was also terrifying: we drove on a thin dirt road along the sides of the mountains. At times I'd look out the window and not be able to see the edge of the road, as if we were floating. At one point I caught the plump Cholita beside me performing a Hail Mary as she looked out the window and then went back to sleep, perhaps also silently reciting some Quechua version of "if I should die before I wake..."
The journey already taking longer than expected, about 7 hours later the bus came to a complete stop. After some commotion, we soon found out that the road ahead had been blocked by a small landslide. Awesome, I thought, what else can we do but turn around? But just as this pessimism came over me, some men walked over and started tossing aside some of the larger rocks so that the bus could cross, and soon they motioned for us to walk across to the other side. As the group of about 50 of us started passing, some small rocks started falling, and we started running. When we all had made it, the bus gunned it, and in my mind I saw a huge rock falling from the side, crashing into the bus and sending it over the edge. Fortunately the bus made it just fine, and two hours later we were in Independencia.
The pueblo is, as you may have guessed from the 10 hour journey through the mountains, in the middle of nowhere. Stepping off the bus, I could already tell that everyone in the community knew one another. It was like a big family. There are no taxis, only one or two hotels, and only recently has a discoteca been built, feeding the newborn metropolitan lust of the town's youth. Alan's father, Don Tito, met us off the bus and took us to his house. Walking inside, he smiled a little and rather shamefully told us that it was a country house. But I absolutely loved it; through the first little walkway we were under the sky again. The kitchen, bathroom, and a bedroom were under roofs straight ahead. Don Tito brought us up some wooden stairs and we found ourselves staring out over a handful of other tin roofed houses similarly styled with the sky as their living room ceilings. I couldn't help but tell him he had a tree house!
My job in Independencia was to interview the elders about how the town's culture has been changing in the last 50 years. As is true of most cultures, elders absolutely love talking about the past. Each one we went to spoke for almost half an hour. What they were saying was good solid material, but I still couldn't help but wonder what I was supposed to do with an hour and a half of footage of old people talking. (Alan is helping me with this, giving me footage of the town's important festivals, and old photographs, etc). After the interviews, Hyunjin and I went on a hunt through the mountainous forrest for the waterfall that had to be at the end of the rushing river that led our way. It was a beautiful path, with trees that turned into tunnels and occasionally rocks acting as stepping stones, but after half an hour of hiking we never did find the waterfall.
Later that night, I asked Don Tito if we could try to find a Fiesta de Comadres to film. This festival, one of many that are part of Carnaval, celebrates the women that are godmothers to each others' children (literally "co-mothers"). But after asking around, we realized there were no fiestas, only social gatherings to drink lots ad lots of chicha, the Bolivian alcoholic drink of choice made out of fermented corn. Later that night, having already shared plenty chicha, I noticed that I appeared to be the only girl present, and made note of this to the others. The younger men present laughed and exclaimed, "There are no girls in Independencia!" No wonder there were no Fiestas de Comadres. I told them even that because there were no girls to partake in the festive activities, they would have to teach me what one does on Dia de Comadres. They all laughed and one quickly went out to buy colorful streamers, which they call serpentina, which are routinely wrapped around the comadres. They excitedly tore off bits and wrapped them around each other and myself, for apparently that night we were all comadres.
It was a good time for all, and of course the copious amount of Chicha only helped. This beverage is traditionally drunk out of round coconut-like shells (I asked what they were, they said some word I didn't recognize, and of course I just nodded blankly), and every first and last sip is poured out as payment to the Quechua god Pachamama. It is also custom that after you finish your cup of Chicha, and of course the men would finish in one huge gulp while I quietly continued to sip at mine, it's polite to fill the cup back up and offer it to somebody else by saying sirvese. Because of this custom, it was very hard for me to refuse a drink. But Don Tito, or Padre Tito as I soon began to call him, was looking out for me, and scolded them to give me less. At the end of the night, myself having probably drank only a third as much Chicha as the others, Pachamama was very happy with us all.
Another cultural first for me that night was chewing the coca leaf. With Evo Morales's New Consitution, the coca leaf is completely legal. Passing around the bag of coca, the men argued about the medicinal properties of the coca leaf and how it is completely different than cocaine. For farmers who work out in the sun all day literally reaping the fruit of their labor, coca leaves suppress hunger, thirst, and exhaustion, allowing them to keep going for longer. At an altitude as high as this, it also relieves headaches. When the bag was passed to me, I said I'd never had any but I would try, and they all politely informed me that I just needed to stick the leaves in one side of my mouth and chew for a while. So I did. Eventually, the leaves began to dissolve and so I naturally swallowed the slosh that was left. But when I went to grab a handful of goat's cheese, they laughed and teased, "Are you going to chew coca on one side and cheese on the other?" I replied that I'd finished with the coca and they all immediately howled with laughter. My eyes grew wide and I quickly asked if that was bad. One of them replied that it wasn't bad, but that I was supposed to keep the coca in my mouth for hours, just chewing and adding to it, and eventually it would release some of the positive chemicals. Oops. Cultural failure.
Looking at my watch, the numbers 11:45 flashed bright a warning that we had to wake up in 3 hours to catch our 4AM bus back to Cochabamba. One of the boys told us that he had heard the road was closed because of another landslide, and I asked what we were supposed to do. Apparently, as we soon found out, there was nothing to do but get on the bus at 4AM and a few hours later, upon hitting the blocked portion of the road, sit there for three hours while heavy machinery attempted to push aside rock and mud so we could pass. Sitting on the side of the road, we watched as bus after bus attempted and failed to cross through, each time getting stuck in the mud and being pulled out by a tractor. Finally though, our bus made it and we were on our way. This time if only took us 13.5 hours to get back to Cochabamba, and although the journey had been rough, my adventures in the little town of Independencia had been rich and definitely worth it all.
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