After the Choro trek I have 7 days left here, so I decide to head out to Sajama, near the Chilean border, to see if I can climb this 6542m (22,000 foot) mountain. The scenery on the way out goes from Altiplanar flatness to more and more hills and wide valleys, and soon I am on the edge of my seat, not because of Sajama looming on the horizon, but because of the staggering # of boulderfields and crags we are whipping through. There is bouldering enough here for a lifetime and I even got some crappy bus shots.
At the ranger station in Sajama they say " you cannot climb alone" and then regale me with horror stories of people who went up there and froze their asses/fell off, etc. I am forced to go with a guide, one Ignacio, and we will set out tomorrow at 6:30 am sharp. In the meantime I get to wander around Sajama which appears totally deserted like a movie set and is full of the crystal clear Altiplano light. I eat dinner at a comedor with a bunch of teenagers and the owner´s somewhat precocious 5 year old comes over to demand homework help. Long division is as hard for Bolivian kids as for us North Americans, it seems.
Ignacio is amazed I want to do the mountain in two days--it is a 10,000 foot ascent and descent and is usually done in two days. I get the price down by offering to trade him my old Dragonfly for one day´s work, and we are off.
The first day we walk up a long dusty valley to Vase Camp, where we brew cocoa tea and then head up the gravel wash. We pass herds of wild vicuñas-- the animals that make fine Bolivian wool clothing-- which the locals round up every 2 years, fleece, and release. The sunny wind rips at me. We camp at 5700m, behind a rock tower, brew tea and soup, and by 7PM I am sleeping uneasily.
We get up at 1:30 AM and when I stagger out of the tent the wind nearly knocks me over. The moon is ful to bursting and the snow and rock have a hazy gleam to them. I am wearing every piece of clothing.
The climb is straightforward-- lots of glacier walking, some crevasses, and about 30m of grade III ice. As we move up I find myself stopping every 30 meters or so. I have not been smoking, I am in good shape, what gives? Also I feel like I am about to simultaneously shit myself and puke. I look down the long ridge and realise, holy shit, we are about 2000m and 2 days from rescue if anything goes wrong. A few minutes later, my crampon falls off and I stare at it and slowly realise I have no idea how to put it back on. It is at this point that it kind of hits me that, geez, alpinists are hardmen, and I am most certainly not, and thankGod Ignacio has spare brain cells.
WHen I get to the summit I couldn´t care less. I feel so bad, like a bag of potentially explosive bacteria combined with a case of asthma with a dollop of exhaustion on top, that it is all I can do to take out my camera and snap a few pics. But now get this. Some intrepid Bolivians...wait for it...played a game of soccer on the summit! I can hardly stay on my feet and these guys carried nets, balls etc, and played soccer. The air here is about 1/3 as dense as at sea level. Conclusion: alpinists, sherpas and Bolivians rock.
We get back to the village at 4 and I sleep for 16 hours, miss the morning bus, and end up hitching back to La Paz with first some construction workers and then on a cama bus. Took more pics of the amazing bouldering.
Anyway this blog is almost done. Yesterday I went and did the Death Road ride with a bunch of Brits. This was not technical, but we got some wonderful cardio workouts on hills at 3500m, some serious high speed, and a cool eco-lodge ending which included fending off amorous parrots, monkeys and ocelots while we hoovered spaghetti. The road is now little used by normal traffic and so you can really open up,. but it is terrifying-- there are loads of 500-1000m drops, and it used to kill 400 people/year.
I ate salchipapas in San Pedro last night and today, the day I leave, I am so fucking sick not even ciprophlaxin seems to be putting a dent into whatever is causing horrible unmentionable symptoms. Anyway I get on a plane in 3 hours, and when I am home, I will post a link to photos-- there are loads of good ones coming. Thanks all for reading and check back in a week or so for pictures.
Saturday, September 1, 2007
Friday, August 31, 2007
A Long and Varied Career
So I trekked to Coroico. This was the trek that featured stunning scenery, tropical forests, Californian booty, knee-destroying descent and random conversations.
I arrived in Coroico, found lodging, washed three days worht of slime from my body, and went out for, of all things, German food. One can get enough of fried chicken and meat. The Backstube had a lovely view and terrible Spaetzle (egg noodles), but fabulous, local organic shade grown free range coffee harvested by the war amputee children of indigenous lesbian Communists.
In the evenign I took the mando to the plaza where I had heard various sorts of music. Now, Coroico is 3500m downhill into the jungle from La Paz, and it is a weekend town for Paceños, and on this lovely night the sun set the colour of a Bloody Mary through loads of mist that crept around the steep forested slopes. The plaza was full fo people strolling. And you have your music options. There are the omnipresent hippies with their loud bad djembes. There is the Colombian with his silver jewellery and guitar, and there is the French horn section fo the local marching band. I chose the Colombian and we chewed coca and then played a few Carlos Vives tunes. It was a beautiful calm evening, little traffic, couples parading, kids kicking a soccer ball and old men talking politics. The square has some lovely abstracts which are Chaco War memorials-- cool to see this usually staid form changed. Oh btw Bolivia sucks at war. They ave lost 1/2 their territory and all of their wars. If you want to win, just fight Bolivia.
Anyway the next guy who comes up is a fat aging Italian hippie. he sits down beside me, pulls out a flask of hooch, takes a swig, and then sets up his jewellery blanket. He sells silver. A kid, a black kid, walks by and the Italian says "hey Son, you tell your Mother I want to see her tomorrow," and the kid says "tell her yourself!"
I raise an eyebrow and he tells me in weird SPanish, "yeah, I got a lotsa kids, I likea very much. Five mothers in Bolivia! I work at night!" It´s like Spanish Borat, I am now expecting some kind of "and now we harvest pubis of woman" comment. His name is Andrei and after about two hours of fragmented conversation I piece together his story.
He dropped out of University in the mid 70s in Italy and moved to Switzerland. He got a job doing concert seccurity for the Swiss equivalent of the Hell´s Angels. The deal was, he bought drugs from them, and got to sell them at concerts. The musicians were big buyers, too. "That dickhead from the Rolling Stones, the guitar player, what the %%·&·? was his name, that guy could smoke anything I gave him," etc etc. He didn´t have much to say for the Stones, but really liked the folks from Motorhead. "Lemmy is a gentleman."
This proved lucrative, but not as lucrative as his next line-- collecting all the crap that people left behind at concerts, cleaning it, and selling it.
"If 50,000 people go to a show, and 5% of them leave something behnd, that´s like, uhh, umm, euhh, like a lot of stuff" he said, contorting his head. Tents, jeans, bags of weed, stereos, bikes. This was good $$ but then he got into moving drugs and finally he imagined that the cops had caught wind of him, so he moved to the Vatican. He saw a job add for security, applied, went through about 3000 interviews, and was told that he now had a job doing security for the Pope.
Papal protection was less interesting and remunerative than drug and scavenging work in Switzerland-- and you had to cut your hair-- but the hours were better and you could hit on Italian women with ease, as opposed to "those cold Swiss bitches." A year later he had a kid, a live-in woman, and a serious case of boredom.
I am not clear on this next bit, but I think he went to trade school for machinist on the side, and ended up working for an Arab who shall we say provided instruments of persuasion for those with budgets. It was interesting work, well paying, and of course tax free, and every day was something different. 200 AK-47s needed modified clips. A helicopter needed mounts for a new type of gun. More power was needed in a turbine.
He eventually got tired of hsi new life and second child, and so packed a rucksack and headed for Guatemala. This was in 1984 at the height of the counterinsurgency, which, being high 24/7 and not much of a news reader, he didn´t really notice, except that there was a surprising lack of tourists in this lovely country. He ended up at San Pedro on Lake Atitlan, which he thought paradise. Cheap weed and coke, nice Indians, lovely water.
One day he woke up and the village was oddly silent. He went toward the main square and just befor ehe came around the corner, he heard somebody shouting orders. "Men this side! Women this side!" ANd wqhen he peked aroudn the corner, he saw about thirty soldiers start to shoot at a crowd of civilians, Indians. He fled the blood and the screaming and went back to his pension, and crawled under the bed. For the next 12 hours the soldiers ransacked the town. There was screaming, shooting, yelling and the occasional explosion. At dusk he emerged and found a number of elderly women dragging corpses out of the main square.
After a bout of barfing his guts out, he was washing his face in the fountain when a voice said "¿Qué te parece esto?" and he looked up and saw a group of ragged armed men. These were the guerillas, those who were workign to overthrowq the horrific Ríos Montt government.
Andrei´s political education began that evening, when the guerillas recruited him for arms maintenance. His job was to fix guns, mortars, what have you.
When I asked him how those nine months were, he simply said something liek "I saw some fucked-up shit" and didn´t elaborate.
When the ´86 armistice was signed, he went to South America. There was good work running coke in Colombia. "The C.I.A. were very helpful," he said, grinning. Reagan´s War On Drugs busated the Cali cartel, and so a number of smaller operators were able to get into business and any guy with some get up and go could make money. By '90 he had an estate, wads of cash in his safe, his own helicopter, a few more kids, and, as it turned out one morning when he was coming back to his finca in his Jeep and saw U.S. soldiers outside his front gate, a new reputation.
So he went to Bolivia, where he met up with a Tarijeña who owned a silver shop, and found that silverwork wasn´t that different from machining parts, and soon had an embryonic business selling jewellery. The business grew, he got the Tarijeña pregnant, and eventually moved out and started his own business in Coroico, where he and I chatted on that lovely evening.
Work, he said, was good. He made jewellery for a few months, sold for a few, and sent money to women with children in Switzerland,Colombia, Tartija, and Italy, and helped out with his three kids and mistresses in Coroico.
"Money," he said to me while shaking his finger, "is bullshit. It will kill you. Stay away from it."
Funny who you meet in the Plaza.
I arrived in Coroico, found lodging, washed three days worht of slime from my body, and went out for, of all things, German food. One can get enough of fried chicken and meat. The Backstube had a lovely view and terrible Spaetzle (egg noodles), but fabulous, local organic shade grown free range coffee harvested by the war amputee children of indigenous lesbian Communists.
In the evenign I took the mando to the plaza where I had heard various sorts of music. Now, Coroico is 3500m downhill into the jungle from La Paz, and it is a weekend town for Paceños, and on this lovely night the sun set the colour of a Bloody Mary through loads of mist that crept around the steep forested slopes. The plaza was full fo people strolling. And you have your music options. There are the omnipresent hippies with their loud bad djembes. There is the Colombian with his silver jewellery and guitar, and there is the French horn section fo the local marching band. I chose the Colombian and we chewed coca and then played a few Carlos Vives tunes. It was a beautiful calm evening, little traffic, couples parading, kids kicking a soccer ball and old men talking politics. The square has some lovely abstracts which are Chaco War memorials-- cool to see this usually staid form changed. Oh btw Bolivia sucks at war. They ave lost 1/2 their territory and all of their wars. If you want to win, just fight Bolivia.
Anyway the next guy who comes up is a fat aging Italian hippie. he sits down beside me, pulls out a flask of hooch, takes a swig, and then sets up his jewellery blanket. He sells silver. A kid, a black kid, walks by and the Italian says "hey Son, you tell your Mother I want to see her tomorrow," and the kid says "tell her yourself!"
I raise an eyebrow and he tells me in weird SPanish, "yeah, I got a lotsa kids, I likea very much. Five mothers in Bolivia! I work at night!" It´s like Spanish Borat, I am now expecting some kind of "and now we harvest pubis of woman" comment. His name is Andrei and after about two hours of fragmented conversation I piece together his story.
He dropped out of University in the mid 70s in Italy and moved to Switzerland. He got a job doing concert seccurity for the Swiss equivalent of the Hell´s Angels. The deal was, he bought drugs from them, and got to sell them at concerts. The musicians were big buyers, too. "That dickhead from the Rolling Stones, the guitar player, what the %%·&·? was his name, that guy could smoke anything I gave him," etc etc. He didn´t have much to say for the Stones, but really liked the folks from Motorhead. "Lemmy is a gentleman."
This proved lucrative, but not as lucrative as his next line-- collecting all the crap that people left behind at concerts, cleaning it, and selling it.
"If 50,000 people go to a show, and 5% of them leave something behnd, that´s like, uhh, umm, euhh, like a lot of stuff" he said, contorting his head. Tents, jeans, bags of weed, stereos, bikes. This was good $$ but then he got into moving drugs and finally he imagined that the cops had caught wind of him, so he moved to the Vatican. He saw a job add for security, applied, went through about 3000 interviews, and was told that he now had a job doing security for the Pope.
Papal protection was less interesting and remunerative than drug and scavenging work in Switzerland-- and you had to cut your hair-- but the hours were better and you could hit on Italian women with ease, as opposed to "those cold Swiss bitches." A year later he had a kid, a live-in woman, and a serious case of boredom.
I am not clear on this next bit, but I think he went to trade school for machinist on the side, and ended up working for an Arab who shall we say provided instruments of persuasion for those with budgets. It was interesting work, well paying, and of course tax free, and every day was something different. 200 AK-47s needed modified clips. A helicopter needed mounts for a new type of gun. More power was needed in a turbine.
He eventually got tired of hsi new life and second child, and so packed a rucksack and headed for Guatemala. This was in 1984 at the height of the counterinsurgency, which, being high 24/7 and not much of a news reader, he didn´t really notice, except that there was a surprising lack of tourists in this lovely country. He ended up at San Pedro on Lake Atitlan, which he thought paradise. Cheap weed and coke, nice Indians, lovely water.
One day he woke up and the village was oddly silent. He went toward the main square and just befor ehe came around the corner, he heard somebody shouting orders. "Men this side! Women this side!" ANd wqhen he peked aroudn the corner, he saw about thirty soldiers start to shoot at a crowd of civilians, Indians. He fled the blood and the screaming and went back to his pension, and crawled under the bed. For the next 12 hours the soldiers ransacked the town. There was screaming, shooting, yelling and the occasional explosion. At dusk he emerged and found a number of elderly women dragging corpses out of the main square.
After a bout of barfing his guts out, he was washing his face in the fountain when a voice said "¿Qué te parece esto?" and he looked up and saw a group of ragged armed men. These were the guerillas, those who were workign to overthrowq the horrific Ríos Montt government.
Andrei´s political education began that evening, when the guerillas recruited him for arms maintenance. His job was to fix guns, mortars, what have you.
When I asked him how those nine months were, he simply said something liek "I saw some fucked-up shit" and didn´t elaborate.
When the ´86 armistice was signed, he went to South America. There was good work running coke in Colombia. "The C.I.A. were very helpful," he said, grinning. Reagan´s War On Drugs busated the Cali cartel, and so a number of smaller operators were able to get into business and any guy with some get up and go could make money. By '90 he had an estate, wads of cash in his safe, his own helicopter, a few more kids, and, as it turned out one morning when he was coming back to his finca in his Jeep and saw U.S. soldiers outside his front gate, a new reputation.
So he went to Bolivia, where he met up with a Tarijeña who owned a silver shop, and found that silverwork wasn´t that different from machining parts, and soon had an embryonic business selling jewellery. The business grew, he got the Tarijeña pregnant, and eventually moved out and started his own business in Coroico, where he and I chatted on that lovely evening.
Work, he said, was good. He made jewellery for a few months, sold for a few, and sent money to women with children in Switzerland,Colombia, Tartija, and Italy, and helped out with his three kids and mistresses in Coroico.
"Money," he said to me while shaking his finger, "is bullshit. It will kill you. Stay away from it."
Funny who you meet in the Plaza.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Uncle Amable
SO when I got back to la Paz I decided to do the El Choro trek. I took a bus to La Cumbre, got out into a desert surrounded by massive icy peaks, swirling with mist and sunshine, and started walking. The trek passes one pass of 4900m, then drops 3500m to Coroico, a tropical vacation town. The scenery goes from arid Altiplano to tropics in three days of knee and tendon destroying descent.
On the second evening, Booty Patrol hit the jackpot when it arrived at SanFrancisco, dropped its heavy pack, and saw two blonde Californians in tight pants doing the Downward Facing Dog. This should be illegal in Bolivia, but one thing led to another, and in the warm tropical twilight we, and a Chinese-Brit lawyer whose accent was an odd mix of Chinese, Queen´s English and full on Nof London Yob, drank tea and discussed life.
"Age," said one of the 22 year old Californians, "is a state of mind." And with this my mind went back to Uncle Amable.
* * *
1971. A young Quebecois engineer, a radar specialist, sits at his desk in NASA and opens his mail. Inside one envelope is an invitation from McDonnel Douglas (or whatever they were back then) to come and work on guidance systems for ICBMs. The engineer, bored, accepts. He moves his family to the U.S.
His new job is fascinating for two years. New microchops mean real time onboard guidance, instead of to-ground relays. They are doing different things with missile stages. The field seems to be wide open, the work is great, life is good. The money is very, very good.
One summer evenign the engineer drives up to Montréal to visit an old school friend who has written him. Dinner, for the first time in young Amable´s life, is vegetarian. After dinner, the friend feeds Amable his fith glass fo wine, looks him in the eye, and says "Amable, you look like shit."
"What?"
There follows a convesation whee the friend details his recent life changes. He has quit smoking and eating meat, taken up yoga, etc etc. This was the end of the ´60s and stuff like this happened. He tells Amable that, although he is no expert, somethign is seriously wrong with him.
On the way home, Amable, driving through the night, has an epiphany. When he gets home, a new idea sits in his head. He divorces his wife. He gives her everything he owns, except for hsi two investment properties in Florida, which go to his brother. He quits his job. Whiel doing so, hsi boss offers him a $30,000 raise to stay on.
"We build death," says Amable.
He buys a one-way plane ticket to Ecuador, takes one suitcase, and disappears.
In Ecuador, Amable treks to Vilacamba, Ecuador, one of the places in the world with the highest longevity rates. He begins doing research on the inhabiants´diets. Two years later, he is invited to do scientific work in Bolivia. He works for various organisations looking at diet, doing engineering stuff, doing some surveying.
Eventually he meets Sylvia through work. She is a Kalawayah, a Pelechucan indigenous healer, and they immediately hit it off. She is a survivor. Her mother was raped and Sylvia was the product. Her stepfather sexually assaulted her when she was 14. This happened a few more times. Sylvia left home. She spent time in an institution on a few occasions. Amable met her during one of her up periods, and would later spend lots of time getting her back on her feet.
Sylvia eventually got it together and she and Amable opened a bakery in La Paz. Thirty years later, and ten years after they retired, people still come up to them and ask them for their cookies. Vegan, whole food and innovative were the things that made these cookies.
Amable, always bored, decided to do more science in between odd consulting jobs. WHen I meet him with my former colleague Ellen and her hu8sband Jaques (Amable´s nephew), he is sitting in a crowded market in Cochabamba, slurping carrot juice and mumbling through a mouthful of busted teeth and the biggest beard I have ever seen outside of a biker bar.
He ahs been busy. He hands me a thick stack of paper. It seems that there are problems with the periodic table, and so he has been revising. He also doesn´t like the calendar, so he has built a perpetual calendar. Ellen and I have a mission-- this stuff has to get to the scientists at UBC so it can be checked.
"Amable," I tell him, " the Maya beat you to it."
"Yea, sure, but look how they had to do their months. Their leap years were 5 days. And they needed two time systems. This is way better. And you should try some fruit juie, it´s very nice."
He reminds me of my Aunt Signe. Tuned onto a whole other reality, an oddly distant but entrancing one.
Sylvia is clearly the one keeping Amable going. She has the watch, remembers the phone #s, and, kind of like Haqns and Chewbacca (or the Korean dude and the black guy on Lost), manages to communicate with Ellen and Jaques despite nto speaking English and them speaking no Spanish. Amable forgets his adress and has to have his taxi pull over so he can call Sylvia and ask her where they live (with her relatives in Cochabamba). Amable can spend half and hour opening his backpack. But while this is going on, he is rearranging chemical equations in his head and setting upa new classification system for micronutrients (vitamins).
"And drink some carrot juice" he mumbles and starts off on a rant about vitamins and the meat industry. I hate carrot juice. Hippie crap. I oblige him with a nice grapefuit juice and he beams.
"Sylvia´s never getting married, and I am not going to retire. That´s for old people."
* * *
"Yea," I say to the California girls as they look at Amable-- impishly grinnign through a massive beard and under a wide beret-- "age is a state of mind."
On the second evening, Booty Patrol hit the jackpot when it arrived at SanFrancisco, dropped its heavy pack, and saw two blonde Californians in tight pants doing the Downward Facing Dog. This should be illegal in Bolivia, but one thing led to another, and in the warm tropical twilight we, and a Chinese-Brit lawyer whose accent was an odd mix of Chinese, Queen´s English and full on Nof London Yob, drank tea and discussed life.
"Age," said one of the 22 year old Californians, "is a state of mind." And with this my mind went back to Uncle Amable.
* * *
1971. A young Quebecois engineer, a radar specialist, sits at his desk in NASA and opens his mail. Inside one envelope is an invitation from McDonnel Douglas (or whatever they were back then) to come and work on guidance systems for ICBMs. The engineer, bored, accepts. He moves his family to the U.S.
His new job is fascinating for two years. New microchops mean real time onboard guidance, instead of to-ground relays. They are doing different things with missile stages. The field seems to be wide open, the work is great, life is good. The money is very, very good.
One summer evenign the engineer drives up to Montréal to visit an old school friend who has written him. Dinner, for the first time in young Amable´s life, is vegetarian. After dinner, the friend feeds Amable his fith glass fo wine, looks him in the eye, and says "Amable, you look like shit."
"What?"
There follows a convesation whee the friend details his recent life changes. He has quit smoking and eating meat, taken up yoga, etc etc. This was the end of the ´60s and stuff like this happened. He tells Amable that, although he is no expert, somethign is seriously wrong with him.
On the way home, Amable, driving through the night, has an epiphany. When he gets home, a new idea sits in his head. He divorces his wife. He gives her everything he owns, except for hsi two investment properties in Florida, which go to his brother. He quits his job. Whiel doing so, hsi boss offers him a $30,000 raise to stay on.
"We build death," says Amable.
He buys a one-way plane ticket to Ecuador, takes one suitcase, and disappears.
In Ecuador, Amable treks to Vilacamba, Ecuador, one of the places in the world with the highest longevity rates. He begins doing research on the inhabiants´diets. Two years later, he is invited to do scientific work in Bolivia. He works for various organisations looking at diet, doing engineering stuff, doing some surveying.
Eventually he meets Sylvia through work. She is a Kalawayah, a Pelechucan indigenous healer, and they immediately hit it off. She is a survivor. Her mother was raped and Sylvia was the product. Her stepfather sexually assaulted her when she was 14. This happened a few more times. Sylvia left home. She spent time in an institution on a few occasions. Amable met her during one of her up periods, and would later spend lots of time getting her back on her feet.
Sylvia eventually got it together and she and Amable opened a bakery in La Paz. Thirty years later, and ten years after they retired, people still come up to them and ask them for their cookies. Vegan, whole food and innovative were the things that made these cookies.
Amable, always bored, decided to do more science in between odd consulting jobs. WHen I meet him with my former colleague Ellen and her hu8sband Jaques (Amable´s nephew), he is sitting in a crowded market in Cochabamba, slurping carrot juice and mumbling through a mouthful of busted teeth and the biggest beard I have ever seen outside of a biker bar.
He ahs been busy. He hands me a thick stack of paper. It seems that there are problems with the periodic table, and so he has been revising. He also doesn´t like the calendar, so he has built a perpetual calendar. Ellen and I have a mission-- this stuff has to get to the scientists at UBC so it can be checked.
"Amable," I tell him, " the Maya beat you to it."
"Yea, sure, but look how they had to do their months. Their leap years were 5 days. And they needed two time systems. This is way better. And you should try some fruit juie, it´s very nice."
He reminds me of my Aunt Signe. Tuned onto a whole other reality, an oddly distant but entrancing one.
Sylvia is clearly the one keeping Amable going. She has the watch, remembers the phone #s, and, kind of like Haqns and Chewbacca (or the Korean dude and the black guy on Lost), manages to communicate with Ellen and Jaques despite nto speaking English and them speaking no Spanish. Amable forgets his adress and has to have his taxi pull over so he can call Sylvia and ask her where they live (with her relatives in Cochabamba). Amable can spend half and hour opening his backpack. But while this is going on, he is rearranging chemical equations in his head and setting upa new classification system for micronutrients (vitamins).
"And drink some carrot juice" he mumbles and starts off on a rant about vitamins and the meat industry. I hate carrot juice. Hippie crap. I oblige him with a nice grapefuit juice and he beams.
"Sylvia´s never getting married, and I am not going to retire. That´s for old people."
* * *
"Yea," I say to the California girls as they look at Amable-- impishly grinnign through a massive beard and under a wide beret-- "age is a state of mind."
Llama foeti
OK. Locals here when building bury a llama foetus (or, if they are richer, and entire llama) under the cornerstone of a new building. This is an old Indian practice for good luck, etc. So you can buy llama foeti in the withces´market hewre in La Paz. Now today´s entry is copied from lonelyplanet.com. Engjou
SUBJECT: returning to the US with a llama fetus? how?
I have grown increasingly excited about the prospect of purchasing a llama fetus while visiting La Paz later this year. I think it would make a perfectly unique souvenir. However I am not sure how difficult it would be to get this into the US. Has anyone tried? Have you had success? Also, what does something like this cost and will it easily be sold to a foreigner? As for how I would go about traveling overland for a few weeks with this tucked in my backpack I have yet to figure out...
Thanks, Mike
RE: returning to the US with a llama fetus? how?
I've done it. A few years back. The person who was traveling with me was certain we were going to be thrown in jail. In fact I'd found the perfect matching baby coffin but he stopped me from getting it. They come in varying sizes...the fetus...well... baby coffins do too. The little ones aren't much fun. If you are going to do it get one that is far enough along that it has fur. I forget how much it cost... not important and it wasn't a huge amount. Packing it. At the furry stage they don't dry out perfectly. Kinda rank. Fairly sturdy but you don't want to bang them around as something may snap off. Too big for the pack. So I went to the market and got one of those small, black, nylon suitcases that everyone has. Problem is that they are soft sided. None of the cheap luggage was hard sided. So I got a cardboard box, cut it to fit. Then put the fetus inside and padded it with dirty laundry.
We got to Miami and had to put all our luggage on a conveyor belt that sent it through a computerized x-ray machine. It shows all the items in different colors...the colors representing the density of the material. Big ole third world type customs guy sitting there bored as hell as you can expect having to view 20,000 bags a day. Turns out the skeleton of a llama fetus is a density that shows up as an irridiscent green on the screen. Looked way cool. Customs guy sits bolt upright and yells loudly,
" What do you have in your bag?"
In case you wonder...such an action brings everyone in uniform in the terminal running. Bet you didn't know there is what looks like a fully equipped SWAT team hidden near arrivals. At least they had automatic weapons, tear gas, flash grenades and shields. When everything settled and it was just me and about 30 customs officers I explained to the head customs guy that it was an aborted llama fetus. By then they had opened the bag...not a good idea given the smell that had been building up all those hours. Customs asked was it preserved and was I using it for scientific study?
There I stand with long hair, beard and Grateful Dead shirt. I told him no that it was an object of religious veneration. When I equated it to communion wafers it turned out there were a lot of Catholics present...at least going by the number of folks rapidly crossing themselves. He did not seem happy, nor inclined to admit it into the country. Ignoring him and the questions of others I launched into a spiel about religious freedom and needing to call the Miami ACLU. Turns out they have a monster list of stuff you can't import. They looked up fetus. They looked up llama. They reluctantly looked up communion wafers. Finally, he asked me what it was related to. I told him it was a New World cameloid. He looked up camels. He couldn't find a regulation against it. Bet they added one after.
So then the fun began. I repacked and handed my bags over to American Airlines for the next leg. I was going to fly to LA and then hop a commuter flight to San Diego. Bags checked all the way through. Got to LA and only had a short wait for the next flight. Small plane...if any of you have flown commuter into San Diego you know. About 20 passengers. We get to San Diego. No bag. In fact 5 of us were missing bags. Commuter terminal has little staffing.
We all had to wait for the one person who could take our report. She had a sheet of photos of different types of bags with a bar code. Point to your bag...she scans and that starts the report. My style was on the sheet. She took down all my flight #s. She told me that was a very common style of bag. Asked if I had tagged it specially or was there anything inside that would be distinctive? Sure...an aborted llama fetus, I told her. Sir...you can't kid around if you want us to find your bag. Honest...ask anyone in Miami. Next day they found the bag and delivered it to my place. The lock had been cut off and the zipper broken. Evidently one of the dogs had rolled over. Either the drug sniffing..or the kind that search for cadavers.
So you see it is quite possible. Hardest part is keeping a straight face while all those around you are going crazy and releasing safeties. There was a later confrontation with the San Diego Board of Education but that is another story. Some people are just dam picky about how sex ed and reproduction is taught.
--GoodTimeBob
SUBJECT: returning to the US with a llama fetus? how?
I have grown increasingly excited about the prospect of purchasing a llama fetus while visiting La Paz later this year. I think it would make a perfectly unique souvenir. However I am not sure how difficult it would be to get this into the US. Has anyone tried? Have you had success? Also, what does something like this cost and will it easily be sold to a foreigner? As for how I would go about traveling overland for a few weeks with this tucked in my backpack I have yet to figure out...
Thanks, Mike
RE: returning to the US with a llama fetus? how?
I've done it. A few years back. The person who was traveling with me was certain we were going to be thrown in jail. In fact I'd found the perfect matching baby coffin but he stopped me from getting it. They come in varying sizes...the fetus...well... baby coffins do too. The little ones aren't much fun. If you are going to do it get one that is far enough along that it has fur. I forget how much it cost... not important and it wasn't a huge amount. Packing it. At the furry stage they don't dry out perfectly. Kinda rank. Fairly sturdy but you don't want to bang them around as something may snap off. Too big for the pack. So I went to the market and got one of those small, black, nylon suitcases that everyone has. Problem is that they are soft sided. None of the cheap luggage was hard sided. So I got a cardboard box, cut it to fit. Then put the fetus inside and padded it with dirty laundry.
We got to Miami and had to put all our luggage on a conveyor belt that sent it through a computerized x-ray machine. It shows all the items in different colors...the colors representing the density of the material. Big ole third world type customs guy sitting there bored as hell as you can expect having to view 20,000 bags a day. Turns out the skeleton of a llama fetus is a density that shows up as an irridiscent green on the screen. Looked way cool. Customs guy sits bolt upright and yells loudly,
" What do you have in your bag?"
In case you wonder...such an action brings everyone in uniform in the terminal running. Bet you didn't know there is what looks like a fully equipped SWAT team hidden near arrivals. At least they had automatic weapons, tear gas, flash grenades and shields. When everything settled and it was just me and about 30 customs officers I explained to the head customs guy that it was an aborted llama fetus. By then they had opened the bag...not a good idea given the smell that had been building up all those hours. Customs asked was it preserved and was I using it for scientific study?
There I stand with long hair, beard and Grateful Dead shirt. I told him no that it was an object of religious veneration. When I equated it to communion wafers it turned out there were a lot of Catholics present...at least going by the number of folks rapidly crossing themselves. He did not seem happy, nor inclined to admit it into the country. Ignoring him and the questions of others I launched into a spiel about religious freedom and needing to call the Miami ACLU. Turns out they have a monster list of stuff you can't import. They looked up fetus. They looked up llama. They reluctantly looked up communion wafers. Finally, he asked me what it was related to. I told him it was a New World cameloid. He looked up camels. He couldn't find a regulation against it. Bet they added one after.
So then the fun began. I repacked and handed my bags over to American Airlines for the next leg. I was going to fly to LA and then hop a commuter flight to San Diego. Bags checked all the way through. Got to LA and only had a short wait for the next flight. Small plane...if any of you have flown commuter into San Diego you know. About 20 passengers. We get to San Diego. No bag. In fact 5 of us were missing bags. Commuter terminal has little staffing.
We all had to wait for the one person who could take our report. She had a sheet of photos of different types of bags with a bar code. Point to your bag...she scans and that starts the report. My style was on the sheet. She took down all my flight #s. She told me that was a very common style of bag. Asked if I had tagged it specially or was there anything inside that would be distinctive? Sure...an aborted llama fetus, I told her. Sir...you can't kid around if you want us to find your bag. Honest...ask anyone in Miami. Next day they found the bag and delivered it to my place. The lock had been cut off and the zipper broken. Evidently one of the dogs had rolled over. Either the drug sniffing..or the kind that search for cadavers.
So you see it is quite possible. Hardest part is keeping a straight face while all those around you are going crazy and releasing safeties. There was a later confrontation with the San Diego Board of Education but that is another story. Some people are just dam picky about how sex ed and reproduction is taught.
--GoodTimeBob
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Politics in the WHite City
Sucre is in the mid-east of Bolivia and this is where in 1825 the Bolivian proclaimed independence and the Republic of Bolivia. Sucre is named after liberator Simón Bolivar´s right hand man.
Now I had a fine tourist breakfast and then Kym and I split up as is our wont. The city itself is stunning-- masses of white buildings, restored colonial architecture, it´s clean, etc. After churches, churches, coffee, more churches, churches and more coffee, I buy a bus ticket for Cochabamba, where I am going to meet Ellen, a work colleague, and her psychedelic uncle in law Amable.
The next morning, the city is oddly still. DAMNIT! The dreaded paro civico has finally showed its ugly head. For one day, the city is at a standstill in protest of...¡la capitalia!
Political digression: La Paz is the capital, but Sucre is where the supreme COurt is. Sucre was capital for part of the 19th century but since then La Paz has been the political capital. There is nothing in the Constitution saying what the Capital should be.
Now in 2006, indigenous President Evo Morales, with braod popular support, decided that the Constitution should be re-written. A selection of elected politicians from across the board, called the Asamblea Constituyente, was formed and their job is by Sept 2007 to have a new COnstitution. The Eastern provinces and cities, like Santa Cruz and Sucre, are on the political and economic upswing, while La Paz, well, the opinion is that La Paz is basket case full of Indians who suck money from the national treasury, and that Sucre could well be the capitol that better reflects a new modern Bolivia.
So, Sucrenian political operators put into circulation the idea that the capitol should move- This is blatant personal gain, and in many ways a bad idea-- the economy of La Paz depends on government, moving things would cost $$, and there would have to be laods of infrastructure built in Sucre. There would be big gains for big money in Sucre.
The Asamblea recently declared that it was not going to include the Capitol´s location in the COnstitution, and La Paz protested on 20 July against the move. Last Thurs, Sucre struck back with a one-day strike, hunger strikes, and the demand that the asamblea take up the question again.
Students ae all for the move. I asked them if they would pay taxes to support the move. ¿Taxes? was the response. Did they want more ocngestion, way more xpnsive housing, etc? ¿What?
On the way out to the bus terminal in the early AM to check on whether my night bus would leave, there was a group of drunken youths with pipes screaming at a guy. "You don´t support us, asshole?" was the theme. Wow, I thought, this is democracy? You don´t liek an opinion, you get ready to pound on a guy?
At the bus terminal, which is shut, all fo the bus companies are playing along with the strike by officially not runing busses, but of course their employees are out front, selling tickets and using Palm Pilots to access their seating and schedule databases.
In the afternoon I stroll down to the Supreme COurt. Outside aer protesters, screaming but not too loudly (hey, this is Bolivia), burning an effigy of President Evo Morales, and yelling "Evo Evo, maricón" ("Evo, you faggot"). Stupidity obviously isn´t confined to politicians. One local tells me "you guys should split, we Bolivians can get stupidly violent". Another guy says "wow, you´re seeing more than the salt flats and the Indian clothes."
Later I start to feel weird about Sucre, and then it hits me-- it´s the most glaring contrast between wealthy and poor yet. The architeture is out of a Spanish pipe dream, the weather beautiful, the tourist food awesome and cheap...and locals stroll with iPods and designer clothes, yapping on cell-phones...and I have never seen so many beggars. And here they are, whining about not having the capital. Later, I would hear that there were more strikes in Sucre, this time of the rural peasants. What kind of operator convinced these guys that bringing in more bureaucrats would improve things? The rich and the politicians have these guys coming and going. The municipal government organised the strikes. Frogive me for my cynicism, but shouldn´t people, ordinary people be doing this kind of thing?
Anyway, in the evening Kyma nd I found food at a comedor, and then split up--Kym is going to the Kellogg School of Business, and her intro to school is trekking in Iceland with her classmates. We spent three fun weeks together so were were both a bit sad as we climbed onto different busses.
Next-- Uncle Amable and the Revision of the World
Now I had a fine tourist breakfast and then Kym and I split up as is our wont. The city itself is stunning-- masses of white buildings, restored colonial architecture, it´s clean, etc. After churches, churches, coffee, more churches, churches and more coffee, I buy a bus ticket for Cochabamba, where I am going to meet Ellen, a work colleague, and her psychedelic uncle in law Amable.
The next morning, the city is oddly still. DAMNIT! The dreaded paro civico has finally showed its ugly head. For one day, the city is at a standstill in protest of...¡la capitalia!
Political digression: La Paz is the capital, but Sucre is where the supreme COurt is. Sucre was capital for part of the 19th century but since then La Paz has been the political capital. There is nothing in the Constitution saying what the Capital should be.
Now in 2006, indigenous President Evo Morales, with braod popular support, decided that the Constitution should be re-written. A selection of elected politicians from across the board, called the Asamblea Constituyente, was formed and their job is by Sept 2007 to have a new COnstitution. The Eastern provinces and cities, like Santa Cruz and Sucre, are on the political and economic upswing, while La Paz, well, the opinion is that La Paz is basket case full of Indians who suck money from the national treasury, and that Sucre could well be the capitol that better reflects a new modern Bolivia.
So, Sucrenian political operators put into circulation the idea that the capitol should move- This is blatant personal gain, and in many ways a bad idea-- the economy of La Paz depends on government, moving things would cost $$, and there would have to be laods of infrastructure built in Sucre. There would be big gains for big money in Sucre.
The Asamblea recently declared that it was not going to include the Capitol´s location in the COnstitution, and La Paz protested on 20 July against the move. Last Thurs, Sucre struck back with a one-day strike, hunger strikes, and the demand that the asamblea take up the question again.
Students ae all for the move. I asked them if they would pay taxes to support the move. ¿Taxes? was the response. Did they want more ocngestion, way more xpnsive housing, etc? ¿What?
On the way out to the bus terminal in the early AM to check on whether my night bus would leave, there was a group of drunken youths with pipes screaming at a guy. "You don´t support us, asshole?" was the theme. Wow, I thought, this is democracy? You don´t liek an opinion, you get ready to pound on a guy?
At the bus terminal, which is shut, all fo the bus companies are playing along with the strike by officially not runing busses, but of course their employees are out front, selling tickets and using Palm Pilots to access their seating and schedule databases.
In the afternoon I stroll down to the Supreme COurt. Outside aer protesters, screaming but not too loudly (hey, this is Bolivia), burning an effigy of President Evo Morales, and yelling "Evo Evo, maricón" ("Evo, you faggot"). Stupidity obviously isn´t confined to politicians. One local tells me "you guys should split, we Bolivians can get stupidly violent". Another guy says "wow, you´re seeing more than the salt flats and the Indian clothes."
Later I start to feel weird about Sucre, and then it hits me-- it´s the most glaring contrast between wealthy and poor yet. The architeture is out of a Spanish pipe dream, the weather beautiful, the tourist food awesome and cheap...and locals stroll with iPods and designer clothes, yapping on cell-phones...and I have never seen so many beggars. And here they are, whining about not having the capital. Later, I would hear that there were more strikes in Sucre, this time of the rural peasants. What kind of operator convinced these guys that bringing in more bureaucrats would improve things? The rich and the politicians have these guys coming and going. The municipal government organised the strikes. Frogive me for my cynicism, but shouldn´t people, ordinary people be doing this kind of thing?
Anyway, in the evening Kyma nd I found food at a comedor, and then split up--Kym is going to the Kellogg School of Business, and her intro to school is trekking in Iceland with her classmates. We spent three fun weeks together so were were both a bit sad as we climbed onto different busses.
Next-- Uncle Amable and the Revision of the World
Problems
"¡Gringo!"
"Yes, ma´am?"
"¿What size are your feet?"
"44."
"¡Ay Diós mío! ¿Are all foreigners tall like you?"
"Lots. Here, it´s a problem, like, uhh, I get on the flota, my knees don´t fit in the seats---"
"No te qujes. And if a Bolivian went to your country, he too would have problems. He would have to go to the children´s section of the clothing store to buy clothes. Or to the women´s. Our women would be forced to wear young girls´clothing."
"Yes, ma´am?"
"¿What size are your feet?"
"44."
"¡Ay Diós mío! ¿Are all foreigners tall like you?"
"Lots. Here, it´s a problem, like, uhh, I get on the flota, my knees don´t fit in the seats---"
"No te qujes. And if a Bolivian went to your country, he too would have problems. He would have to go to the children´s section of the clothing store to buy clothes. Or to the women´s. Our women would be forced to wear young girls´clothing."
The Man Who Would Be Gay
This was all in Spanish. Yes, effeminate people in Spanish sound like effeminate people in English.
"Thuper!" says Juan, our driver, "let´th go!"
He pilots the car through a videogame`s worth of multicloured streets, vendors, homeless, cell-phone-scatter-brained Indian women and people riding horses past Mercedes stuck in traffic. The light is warm and yellow and we pull into a market.
"Thweetheart," says J., "can I get through here?"
"No, try the butcher`s end," sniggers a cholita, and J. shakes his head. He has nicely done hair, delicate hands, a crisp shirt, an oddly high voice small, narrow eyes and an almos clenched smile.
Once on the highway to Sucre, I ask J. what kinds of tunes he likes.
"Clásicos," he says, and puts in a Scorpions tape. HERE I AM, duh, duh, da-da, ROCK ME LIKE A HURRICANE. But if you pay the piper you call the tune, so from the back seat Kym requests a change of music. So we get some Michael Jackson and soon there are two separate dance parties going on in the cab, one in the driver`s seat, one behind the driver.
"I like copth," says J., "I jutht can´t afford the bribth." People in Bolivia hand-wave and flash to indicate pig-infestedor pig-free road ahead. "I drive thith road sometimeth five timeth a day. I must say I really like thith road. Ethpecially at night."
Five times a day? It´s 160 km/2.5 hours from Potosí to Sucre, so say you got 1/2 hour of turnaround that´s like 15 hours of driving a day, plus you might not end up in the city where you started when it`s evening.
"Yeth, I thleep in my car. Thee my blanket? Well I have a bottle of whithkey in there. I just play thome Michael Bolton and wrap mythelf in my blankets and I thleep WONderfully¨."
"Does your wife miss you?"
"Wife? I got rid of her a long time ago. Thith--" he pats the Toyota wagon´s wheel-- "is my wife." There follows an extended comparison of the faults (many) of women and the virtues (many) of cars and open roads. Something to the effect of "you can drive your car more" and " it is easier to get into acar than a wife" follows.
"So, uh, what do you like to do in your uhh spare time?"
"Well, firtht, I get home, I wash my car. Then I wash mythelf. I like to be clean. Then I drink whithkey and fall athleep. The next day I thay hello to my friendth--you know, I don´t really like people, I jutht thay "hello," nada más, and that´th it, I go to my apartment, I drink whithkey, I watch a nithe little movie, I fall athleep."
Wow, I think, this guy is your model coporate citizen, no life, loves his job, does it 16 hours a day. "OK now we are in the ghotht area, so we thtop here" says J and we pull over to pool of a rabble of filthy dogs, clean Indians and dusty yellow light and the smell of cooking potatoes and meat. When we get going again, J. explains that this is where the local ghosts roam, and at night, they take your soul, so you end up zombie like, just going through the motions of life without really being there.
"What does that actually look like," I ask, "being like a zombie?"
J. puts in a Michael Bolton tape, the dance party starts again, and he says, "People, they work, all the time. They don´t really remember their family and friendth. They are itholated. But they don´t know they are unhappy. I have theen lotsth of them in the hothpital."
"Yea? They treat zombiehood?"
Then J. is quiet and I ask Kym, ok, is this dude gay? Cos if he is, I want to hear about how life is down here, and if he isn´t, is it weird for him being The Effeminate Straight Guy (do you remember this Dana Carvey character on SNL? "JUTH-tin," he would tell his son, "I need you to go upthtairth to your room until you dethide your father´th Not Gay. Now I´m going to thit down and have thith yummy beer!").
For the rest of the ride, we get J.´s take on people (a pain in the butt), women (ditto), wiveth (double ditto), carth (excellent), work (relaxing), thocial life (draining), whithkey (lovely), the government (¿what´th that?), disco muthic (¡thuper!), lazy Indians who don´t work (don´t feed the beggars, they all have nice houses), bus drivers (slow but professional), 20 year old cab drivers (a menathe to thothiety), tight jeans on women (glamorous), the bar and disco scene (Sucre--good, Potosí--lame, Santa Cruz-- ¡thuperb!, La Paz-- too high but they have exthellent cocaine there).
When we finally pull into Sucre, the Plaza is crammed full of hottie University students and for the first time in 3 weeks I hear Kym say "wow, that´s one hot dude," gringas not typically being intested in short macho Latino men (Spaniards being the exception--women love Spaniards and Irish, also they like educated Brit men (any Brit man in North America is automatically upper class, women love that (and if he is a yob (accent wise), he is one social class up from yobhood).
Finally a very carefully put-together woman walks by. Blonde, built, with everything designer you could imagine, decent booty, etc. J. rolls down the window and says the Spanish equivalent to"¡Hey, baby, yo´milkshake is off da shizzle!"
Well after Kym and I discuss this and I say, gay, and Kym says, no way. So I explain this to a young Bolivian the next day, a guy who speaks English and has lived in Montréal. Straight out of Savage was the response:
"Divorced? No kids? Likes dance music? Please. Doesn´t see his family much? Drinks a lot? Neat and clean? Come ON! Likes dancing to disco and house? Knows all the bars? Likes Michael Bolton? He wants to smoke your pole!"
We both laughed. Later that day I stopped by the gay and lesbian booth in the Plaza. The country´s univerity student federation´s congress was happening, and the square was full of posters, booths and young people texting each other. A very nice and extremely straight acting young man spoke with me and told me some figures. More than one in every two Bolivian gays has been physically assaulted at least once in their life. Some doctors refuse to treat HIV+ patients. The Catholic Church-- which is currently bargaining hard to be included in the talks which are rewriting the Constitution-- opposes sex education, protection for homosexuals (and transgendered people) from discrimination, distribution of condoms, etc. The government defines homosexuality as "a problem." Police routinely raid gaybars and bash. A social youth worker I later talked to said a huge # of her homeless kids were gay, not unlike the U.S. and oh-so-progressive Canada.
That blonde girl from the night before, she did have a nice milkshake. And two people saw him saying so. Mission--hopefully--accomnplished.
"Thuper!" says Juan, our driver, "let´th go!"
He pilots the car through a videogame`s worth of multicloured streets, vendors, homeless, cell-phone-scatter-brained Indian women and people riding horses past Mercedes stuck in traffic. The light is warm and yellow and we pull into a market.
"Thweetheart," says J., "can I get through here?"
"No, try the butcher`s end," sniggers a cholita, and J. shakes his head. He has nicely done hair, delicate hands, a crisp shirt, an oddly high voice small, narrow eyes and an almos clenched smile.
Once on the highway to Sucre, I ask J. what kinds of tunes he likes.
"Clásicos," he says, and puts in a Scorpions tape. HERE I AM, duh, duh, da-da, ROCK ME LIKE A HURRICANE. But if you pay the piper you call the tune, so from the back seat Kym requests a change of music. So we get some Michael Jackson and soon there are two separate dance parties going on in the cab, one in the driver`s seat, one behind the driver.
"I like copth," says J., "I jutht can´t afford the bribth." People in Bolivia hand-wave and flash to indicate pig-infestedor pig-free road ahead. "I drive thith road sometimeth five timeth a day. I must say I really like thith road. Ethpecially at night."
Five times a day? It´s 160 km/2.5 hours from Potosí to Sucre, so say you got 1/2 hour of turnaround that´s like 15 hours of driving a day, plus you might not end up in the city where you started when it`s evening.
"Yeth, I thleep in my car. Thee my blanket? Well I have a bottle of whithkey in there. I just play thome Michael Bolton and wrap mythelf in my blankets and I thleep WONderfully¨."
"Does your wife miss you?"
"Wife? I got rid of her a long time ago. Thith--" he pats the Toyota wagon´s wheel-- "is my wife." There follows an extended comparison of the faults (many) of women and the virtues (many) of cars and open roads. Something to the effect of "you can drive your car more" and " it is easier to get into acar than a wife" follows.
"So, uh, what do you like to do in your uhh spare time?"
"Well, firtht, I get home, I wash my car. Then I wash mythelf. I like to be clean. Then I drink whithkey and fall athleep. The next day I thay hello to my friendth--you know, I don´t really like people, I jutht thay "hello," nada más, and that´th it, I go to my apartment, I drink whithkey, I watch a nithe little movie, I fall athleep."
Wow, I think, this guy is your model coporate citizen, no life, loves his job, does it 16 hours a day. "OK now we are in the ghotht area, so we thtop here" says J and we pull over to pool of a rabble of filthy dogs, clean Indians and dusty yellow light and the smell of cooking potatoes and meat. When we get going again, J. explains that this is where the local ghosts roam, and at night, they take your soul, so you end up zombie like, just going through the motions of life without really being there.
"What does that actually look like," I ask, "being like a zombie?"
J. puts in a Michael Bolton tape, the dance party starts again, and he says, "People, they work, all the time. They don´t really remember their family and friendth. They are itholated. But they don´t know they are unhappy. I have theen lotsth of them in the hothpital."
"Yea? They treat zombiehood?"
Then J. is quiet and I ask Kym, ok, is this dude gay? Cos if he is, I want to hear about how life is down here, and if he isn´t, is it weird for him being The Effeminate Straight Guy (do you remember this Dana Carvey character on SNL? "JUTH-tin," he would tell his son, "I need you to go upthtairth to your room until you dethide your father´th Not Gay. Now I´m going to thit down and have thith yummy beer!").
For the rest of the ride, we get J.´s take on people (a pain in the butt), women (ditto), wiveth (double ditto), carth (excellent), work (relaxing), thocial life (draining), whithkey (lovely), the government (¿what´th that?), disco muthic (¡thuper!), lazy Indians who don´t work (don´t feed the beggars, they all have nice houses), bus drivers (slow but professional), 20 year old cab drivers (a menathe to thothiety), tight jeans on women (glamorous), the bar and disco scene (Sucre--good, Potosí--lame, Santa Cruz-- ¡thuperb!, La Paz-- too high but they have exthellent cocaine there).
When we finally pull into Sucre, the Plaza is crammed full of hottie University students and for the first time in 3 weeks I hear Kym say "wow, that´s one hot dude," gringas not typically being intested in short macho Latino men (Spaniards being the exception--women love Spaniards and Irish, also they like educated Brit men (any Brit man in North America is automatically upper class, women love that (and if he is a yob (accent wise), he is one social class up from yobhood).
Finally a very carefully put-together woman walks by. Blonde, built, with everything designer you could imagine, decent booty, etc. J. rolls down the window and says the Spanish equivalent to"¡Hey, baby, yo´milkshake is off da shizzle!"
Well after Kym and I discuss this and I say, gay, and Kym says, no way. So I explain this to a young Bolivian the next day, a guy who speaks English and has lived in Montréal. Straight out of Savage was the response:
"Divorced? No kids? Likes dance music? Please. Doesn´t see his family much? Drinks a lot? Neat and clean? Come ON! Likes dancing to disco and house? Knows all the bars? Likes Michael Bolton? He wants to smoke your pole!"
We both laughed. Later that day I stopped by the gay and lesbian booth in the Plaza. The country´s univerity student federation´s congress was happening, and the square was full of posters, booths and young people texting each other. A very nice and extremely straight acting young man spoke with me and told me some figures. More than one in every two Bolivian gays has been physically assaulted at least once in their life. Some doctors refuse to treat HIV+ patients. The Catholic Church-- which is currently bargaining hard to be included in the talks which are rewriting the Constitution-- opposes sex education, protection for homosexuals (and transgendered people) from discrimination, distribution of condoms, etc. The government defines homosexuality as "a problem." Police routinely raid gaybars and bash. A social youth worker I later talked to said a huge # of her homeless kids were gay, not unlike the U.S. and oh-so-progressive Canada.
That blonde girl from the night before, she did have a nice milkshake. And two people saw him saying so. Mission--hopefully--accomnplished.
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