Mary's Bolivia

TAMBO QUEMADO

2006-02-06T13:21:00.000+01:00

TAMBO QUEMADO

February 8 1995

Did somebody say there was a road from Bolivia to the Chilean border?  A ROAD?  A Track? a trail?  They are making a road, it is true, but that is surely not quite the same thing!

The new road from Cochabamba to La Paz is fine, but, of course, we had to leave that at Patacamaya where there is a sign to Puerto Japonés (What Japanese would be mad enough to come there remains a mystery to me), but a lady told us it was better to continue a little and take another road to the left at a bar where the buses stop.  We did that and were confronted by a multiplicity of dirt tracks.  Asking one man whether this was the road to Chile he replied "Claro que sí".  What was so clear about it continues to elude me, but he obviously thought it was clear enough.  We continued along the track and some time later came upon road building machinery.  That was fine because, although the surface was not asphalted, it was firm.  However, the smooth going did not last long.  The road works stopped and tyre tracks ran here and there all over the altiplano where truck drivers had obviously taken the most convenient route when it was raining.  We chose one and carried on.

Not a living soul.  Very little in the way of vegetation, just sparse scrub.  Miles between one adobe hut and the next.  A dry salt lake.  The track got worse - ruts larger, deeper, sandier.  We stopped and Robert got out to ask some girls and a lady at a hut if this was the right way to Chile.  The girls ran away to hide and the old lady sat hunkered down at the door, impassive.  She could not help anyway because she only spoke Aymara.  Eventually the two girls, having wrapped themselves up in their cardigans and pulled their skirts down as far as they could, confirmed that the track in front of their hut, not the one behind which we were on, did indeed go to Chile.  Worse and worse.  Robert got out at another hut where he could see an old man herding llamas a little way away.  At the sight of this bearded stranger  a clutch of little children scrambled off and hid in the hut, all darkness and misery.  When he reached him, the old man was no use as a source of information because he was stone deaf and probably only spoke Aymara anyway.  Some distance later I got out and asked a lady with two young children minding their llamas.  Yes, right road but a long, long way to go.   On and on.  Worse and worse  - relieved only by the elegance of the llamas grazing on the sparse vegetation.

We were on the point of turning back to Oruro and trying the road to Iquique the next day when a pick-up truck appeared out of nowhere - the first vehicle we had seen since we left the road-building team behind.   This was the old road to Chile but it was dreadful, they said, and we would do better to go back and try and get on to the new road.  We would come to a hut with tyres outside.  There there was a track to the left.  If we took that, we would eventually come to the new road.  We took their advice.

In fact there was only one tyre outside the hut, empty except for a few chickens sheltering from the sweltering heat.  We stopped.  A campesino was walking in our direction.  Maybe he would know how to reach the new road.   He did.  He would come with us, so I gave him the front seat to act as guide.  Down the track, just as the men in the truck had told us, but the track did not last long.  Cross country. He had been walking all day long because he had come to visit a relative and was now on his way back home.  No schools here.  No doctor.  No nothing.  Survive or die.  Down a steep incline like a V which we thought we would never get out of - but fortunately we did.  The campesino got out at the place most convenient to him, rejoicing in his ride and informing us that we would soon reach the new road.  We did.  At times like this the power of prayer and hope and the realization of our powerlessness in the face of Nature are more than abundantly clear.  The certainties of urban life have no place in these bleak surroundings where nothing is foreseeable except the harshness of life and the inhospitable landscape.

Suddenly before us was a road block with more road-building equipment.  Sorry you cannot pass.  But we want to get to Tambo Quemado to get into Chile.  Fine, but not on this road.  How do we get there? On the old road.  Not on your life!  We have just come from there and it is impassable.  Impasse.  Argue, cajole.  Then the engineer in charge appeared on the scene.  United Nations.  Going to Chile.  Persuade, persuade.  O.K.  You can go.  The reason why we have the block up is that there were so many trucks coming and going that they were ruining our work before we had finished it.  We understand.  Thanks a million.  Off we went.

Some kilometres further on another block manned by a ruffian and his apprentice.  You can´t pass.  It ‘s forbidden.  We know that, but at the last block they gave us special permission to pass.  Where is your written authorization?  We haven´t got one.  Well, you will have to drive back and ask the "licenciado" for one.  There is no licenciado there.  He is an engineer and he has given us permission to pass.  Negative response, waiting for a backhander.  Lift that barrier and let us pass.  Finally we blunderbussed him into opening up the block.  Then, not long after - dismay! - a fork.  Which one to take?  Nothing for it.  Back to the ruffian.  The apprentice immediately chirped up that it was the road to the left.  However, since we had no confidence in the accuracy of this information as they were mad at having to let us through, Robert insisted, asking them their names  and reminding them that they had no idea of who they were talking to and that they ought to bear in mind that if the information was wrong they were both very liable to lose their jobs.  At that, the same ruffian´s apprentice vounteered that it was in fact the right fork.  Which piece of information to believe?

We were inclined to think that the latter was more likely to be correct, but another vehicle came by and took the left fork so we decided to check that out first since there was a kind of camp not too far away.  A truck driver at the camp was able to tell us that it was indeed the right fork so we turned around again.  Again the road disappeared and the solitude and heat of the altiplano in mid-afternoon weighed down heavier than ever.  The perfectly conical snow-capped peak of the Parinacota Volcano on the right and twin volcanos with their flattened crater tops on the left grew nearer, which was a comfort.  Time wore on and we ate up kilometres.  Silence.  Solitude and emptiness.  At last the road-building team again.  Another two hours to the border.  It was now 4p.m. and 8 hours since we had left Cochabamba.  On we plodded.  More road-building.  I never thought I would be so glad to see road-builders, the only sign of  another living soul in that landscape of vast empty flatness punctuated by  tortured volcanic protuberances.

The members of these road-building gangs are reminiscent of the pioneers of the Wild West building the railroad: colourful characters each with his own particular eccentricity.  One we stopped to ask for information was a Brazilian engineer with his front teeth missing and a huge straw hat with multicoloured scarves entwined around the brim and streaming out behind him in the brisk breeze of the altiplano.  Although it was hot - about 33ºC - most of the men were wearing balaclava helmets to cover their noses in an attempt to avoid breathing in some of the dust which blew thick all around.   Another gang.  This time, more precise information.  18 kilometres to Tambo Quemado said the engineer after a swift calculation.  Thank God.  The sun was now low in the sky and we were anxious to reach the border before nightfall.

Then disaster.  Some kilometres further on all progress was halted because a huge truck had got bogged down in the sand and they were trying to dig it out.  We could take a track to the left, or we could wait.  We decided to wait because we had been told that this new road would take us direct to the border whereas there was no guarantee where the other route would land us and there were not many minutes of daylight left.

The men dug and dug until the rear right wheel was free of sand.  Then they threw huge rocks down and manoeuvred them in under the wheel in the midst of a swirling dust storm which obliterated everything.  The sand scratched the skin like sandpaper.  When that was done, a machine backed down and the truck was tied to it.  Pull, pull.  Wheels spinning.   Back down again.  Pull some more until at last the wheels started to turn and slowly the machine and truck emerged from the dip and the rut.  Next an earth-moving machine went in to pound a huge rock into the sand and flatten the way for other vehicles.  Finally, after half an hour or so, we were on our way once more.

At last, with the last rays of daylight we reached Tambo Quemado, a desolate, forlorn cluster of adobe huts at an altitude of 4,660m.  On the right all the official buildings - Customs, Immigration, Police.  The cold wind tore at our thin clothing as we got out to proceed with all the formalities.  We were too impatient to be gone to bother to rummage around in the luggage in search of warmer things. Passports, permit to take the vehicle out of the country.  The village children,  drawn by this new attraction with two dogs, came running out from under the wheels of all the trucks waiting on the far side of the border.  Much hilarity greeted Simon's frantic barking and hands pressed against the windows were a further provocation.  Papers and more papers.  Finally the formalities were completed.  No, you cannot check the vehicle.  We have diplomatic immunity.  Ah well, then how about some cooperation?  What does that mean, asked Robert, knowing full well what it meant.  Well, something for the wawas (children).  Sixty bolivianos did the trick and they went off as happy as Larry.

The barrier pole lifted and we started off once more, buoyed up at the prospect of reaching the surfaced road on the Chilean side.  But where was it?  A rutted track was all there was and it seemed to go for miles.  Getting dark now.  At last half way across the seemingly endless no-man´s land on the Bolivian side the dirt track was suddenly  transformed into an asphalt road.  What joy!  What relief!

At 8:15p.m. (one hour later Chilean time) in the pitch black we reached the Chilean border post.  Here all is order and cleanliness, all the more striking in comparison with the dilapidated installations on the Bolivian side.   The first building on the left is the carabinero post.  No, you must first go to the Immigration Office.  Passports, papers.  Customs.  Temporary import licence for the car.  No, you cannot check the luggage.  We have diplomatic immunity.  Well, all right then.  Sanitary Authorities.  Dog health certificates and international travel papers.  Finally back again to the police office.  Driving licence.  At last, half an hour later we were free to resume our journey.

From the travel information provided by the Chilean Consulate in La Paz we knew that there was a camp site near the border and this had been confirmed by the policemen at the border post, but it was so dark that we decided that the surest thing would be to continue to the nearest village,  Putre, some 50 kilometres away.  Mounted police along the road gave us instructions and told us to ask again at the military barracks some way down the road.  More information, all accurate, and at long last, at 10:15p.m. exactly fourteen hours after leaving Cochabamba, heads pounding from the altitude, we reached the hotel in Putre.

In Chile they put the clocks forward by an hour in summertime so it was 11:15p.m. Despite this, they prepared some vegetables and hot milk and honey for us.  The temperature now was a chilling minus 3ºC, a far cry from the scorching 33ºC of the afternoon.  Turning on the heater in the room we prepared to rest.  Sleep was difficult because our pulse was racing from the altitude and we had to make an effort to breathe deeply to get enough oxygen from the thin air.  But the bed was welcome and our relief at having accomplished the arduous trip were reward enough.

That is the chronicle of the first day of our holidays.

THE FLOOD

2006-01-24T11:53:00.000+01:00

THE FLOOD

January 31 1995

Well, now I know how Noah felt.  When I wrote my last letter to you in the middle of the afternoon of January 31, I said that there was a deluge outside.  There was, and it did not stop but continued all night long.  In the middle of the night one of the watchmen came to waken us because some of the workers who live in cabins in the grounds of the dairy were marooned (basically because he, the watchman, had been asleep on the job and when he woke up the water was already high).  The river had risen by about 3m. and the cabins were now virtually in the middle of the water where the current was extremely strong.  Trees were rushing past at about 60m.p.h. (and that is NO exaggeration). The cabin where the vet stays  (Fortunately he was not in it at the time because he had gone to Santa Cruz) went sailing off down the river.  Since we have no boat or anything (Robert asked for a Zodiac and ouboard motor a year ago and nobody paid any attention), we got a couple of inner tubes from the tyres of one of the lorries and two of the workers who are strong swimmers swam across with them with a cable attached which was being held by Robert, Caruso (the Argentinian), the night watchman and a couple of others who pitched up.  They managed to reach the old carpentry above which lived two workers, one with his wife and a 10 day old baby.  From there they managed to get across to another cabin next to the one which had just been washed away and bring Gonzalo over to the carpentry shop.

By then it was clear that with the inner tubes it would be impossible to evacuate the mother  and baby because the current was too strong and it would be too difficult - if not impossible - for the people to hold them.  What to do?  We got some stronger cable which they took across and tied to one of the wooden pillars of the carpentry and the other end we tied to a tree.  Things were getting pretty desperate because the water had risen another metre and a half and Robert was afraid that if one of these tree "torpedoes" were to hit the fragile structure again the whole carpentry would collapse and then there would be no chance of saving any of them.  The father was  too shocked to take the responsibility of bringing the baby across. Gonzalo and Milton were not good enough swimmers to be able to carry the baby, hold on to the cable and at the same time propel themselves across, and the mother was definitely not able to do that.  So, I asked one of the strong swimmers if he felt he could do it and he agreed, although it was a big responsibility because, if anything went wrong, I am sure he would always feel that he was to blame.  The other good swimmer was out of commission because he had been battered against a tree and his hand was injured.

It was a hard job to convince the mother to let go of the baby, but eventually it was wrapped up in a bit of plastic and then in a blanket and placed on the nape of this chap´s neck and the blanket firmly tied around him.  He jumped into the water and, holding on to the cable, came hand-crossing across the river with Robert and the others up to their necks in water pulling and hauling on this side.  I had dry things on this bank to wrap the baby in although they did not stay dry for long with the torrents of water that were falling.  The baby did not bat an eyelid!  When the mother saw that the baby was safe and sound on this side she came across too and then all the others followed, just in time to see two of the walls of the carpentry collapse.  They were going to call the baby Israel but Robert said they should call it Moisés.  Moisés it is going to be.

All the cabins will have to be dismantled and what can be salvaged will be used to build new ones on higher ground.  In fact nobody should ever have built anything down there because it is clearly part of the river bed when the river is in flood.  People say that when the Swedish missionary was building down there they told him this but his reply was "God is on my side".  What a cretin!  All the trees have been washed away too and now that the waters have subsided there is about 2m. of mud everywhere, including inside the electricity house which was full of water.

That was another worry, so all the electricity had to be shut off in case everything went up in smoke.  Now Robert says that he wants all that equipment transferred up to relatively safer higher ground.  Not a single soul from the UN called to find out if we were all right or anything.  Not a cheep.  Luckily the telephone to the house is still working because the wires come up a hill but all the other telephones in the area are out of order because the cables were washed downriver.

About midday the birds began to squawk and sing and move around a bit so we knew that the rain was going to ease off.  By late afternoon the waters had abated enough to be able to try and assess the damage.  When things had calmed down a bit we tried to get into Ivirgarzama.  That was not possible because the whole place was completely under water.  Several people were washed away.

At the height of the emergency I called the office in Chimoré and asked the watchman there to go to the UMOPAR (the military) to ask them to come and do something to help the people.  The reply was that they had enough to do looking out for themselves!

The other night watchman slept right through the whole catastrophe.   We had long suspected that he slept all night but had no proof.  This time he was caught red-handed.  Robert and Milton. the electrician, stepped over him about 6 times in the course of the night and day because he was sleeping in the generator house and, when they cut  off the mains supply and connected the generators, he did not even wake up!  At 5:30pm he emerged to start his night´s "work" whereupon Robert dismissed him on the spot.  He had the gall to say that he worked hard for his living not like these filthy foreigners who do nothing at all.  He was in his native country and nobody would dismiss him in a hurry.  He would take the whole thing to the Trade Union and then we would see because he was a revolutionary.  Robert said he was most impressed with his contribution towards saving his fellow countrymen in the middle of the storm, so good-bye.  Come back tomorrow to collect whatever is due to you.  Thank you and good night.  Off he stormed!

The roads to both Santa Cruz and Cochabamba were cut because several bridges had collapsed.  Filippo and Monica arrived back in Santa Cruz yesterday morning and, since the driver had almost been washed away on the way to collect them, he tried to take the old road from Santa Cruz to Cochabamba.  It took them 10 hours to get there because there were avalanches all the way.  They will try and come in to the Chapare from Cochabamba today, although last night the road was closed.  It has not rained since so maybe they will make it.

My conclusion from all this is that the rainforest should be left as Nature intended.  Everyone should go back to where they came from and the Yukis and Yuras, the tribes who have lived here for centuries, should be left to live as they have always done.  The more trees that are cut down the worse this kind of situation will become.

SAMAPAITA

2006-01-22T19:35:00.000+01:00

SAMAPAITA

The weekend of November 25-27 we went to Santa Cruz.  The idea was to visit the ruins of Samapaita which Monica had visited with her mother.  Driving out of Santa Cruz along the old Santa Cruz - Cochabamba road one realizes for the first time why Santa Cruz's official name is Santa Cruz de la Sierra.  It had been a mystery to me because the perspective from the Chapare road into Santa Cruz is absolutely flat.  However, about 40Kms. out of the town the foothills of the Andes begin and the road which follows the course of the River Piraí begins to twist a little.

The river which rises at Samaipata has cut a great canyon through the mountains which rise fairly steeply on either side.  The geological formation of red and yellow sandstone is very young and unstable, which means that avalanches are frequent, bringing huge rocks down on to the road.  They are made more common by the tremendous erosion caused by burning the forest on the slopes of the hills to make way for cultivation. The rock faces are quite dramatic with huge medallion "sculptures" where great slabs have fallen away. This area is being invaded by landless peasants from the Cochabamba valleys and elsewhere who simply arrive, decide where they want to stay, cut down the trees, burn the remainder and start  planting.  At first they erect a precarious structure of wooden poles which they cover with plastic.  As time goes by they progress to a more stable dwelling with a palm roof and wattle walls and later perhaps mud bricks and corrugated asbestos sheeting.  Human pressure on the land is the main cause of deforestation, erosion and destruction.

The vegetation is tropical at first but, as the road climbs, it becomes more temperate or sometimes Mediterranean with pines on the upper slopes. One of the most exciting aspects are the rock faces completely colonized by orchids or every kind which cling precariously to the smooth surfaces. There are some magnificent properties along the route, obviously the mansions of drug barons.  The people in this area are a mixture of Andean, Amazonian and lowland peoples because this area is a point of convergence of the Amazonian and Andean cultures.

120Kms. out of Santa Cruz is the signpost to "El Fuerte" or the Fort.  On the left a dirt track heads into the hills.  At first it descends and crosses the incipient River Piraí at the bottom of the gorge and then climbs steeply up to the "fort" which stands at 2,000m.  Fortunately it was dry because otherwise the road would have been impassable.  It was also fortunate that it was cloudy because up on the crest with no tree cover the sun is strong, even on a cloudy day.  There was also a stiff breeze blowing which was welcome and a novelty because in the Chapare winds are very rare.

The "fort" was not really a fort at all but a ceremonial centre of some kind.  It is a solid rounded rock of red sandstone forming the crest of a hill.  Into the rock a series of incisions have been made.  At the top there is a rounded, flat table.  There is also a kind of well-like depression with three seats cut into it.  This is where the priests would have sat.  There is another well and from this there descend two rectangular channels in one of which diamond shapes have been cut representing the skin markings of the rattlesnake.  The purpose of this is not clear but it would appear that liquid, either water or chicha, was poured into the well and flowed down the channels.  The incisions made the liquid flow more slowly so that by the time it reached the bottom it had become warmer.  At the bottom of the rock there are a couple of medallion shapes.  The one on the right is badly eroded but the one on the left clearly depicts a puma shape.  There are other carvings also depicting tropical jungle animals such as jaguars. The authors of this stage of the centre were the Chané, an Amazonian Indian tribe.

According to Chacho González, the UNIDO Bolivia national representative who accompanied a now famous achaeologist friend of his on some of the earliest studies of the rock, told me that some archaeologists believe that the site was a huge meteorological station because it sits astride a point where the tropical and Andean winds meet (This explains the fact that there is tropical vegetation on one side and barrenness on the other).  The two rectangular channels would therefore have acted as rain gauges.  On the right-hand side there is apparently a calendar cut into the rock which is hit by the sun in such a way that, in conjunction with the wind and rain information, it would allow them to determine the onset of the rainy season and hence predict the time to sow: this was one of the most important functions of the priestly class in all pre-Columbian American cultures.

On the right side of the rock rectangular niches have been cut into the rock, sometimes a small one beside a taller one.  It would appear that either statues were placed there or beautiful young girls were exhibited in them.  These niches may have been made by the later occupants of the centre, the Incas, who conquered the area at a later date.  None of the engraved motifs are of Inca origin. In some of the niches round holes are to be seen.  These were made by modern-day bounty hunters who thought that maybe there was treasure hidden in the rock and they tried to dynamite it!

The last occupants of the centre, and this is why it got the name "the "fort" were the conquering Spaniards who saw the strategic importance of such a site.  At 2,000m. it affords an all-round panoramic view of the surrounding countryside and a lookout station was posted there.  Four wooden posts were embedded in the rock and a palm roof probably afforded shade and protection from the rain.

All around the rock the vegetation is scarce and more temperate: Robert even found cranberries!  However, on the right side forest rises and inside it the microclimate is quite different: it is warm and humid.  In this forest there are a number of buildings which would appear to have been dwellings associated with the centre.  The site which was only discovered in 1974 is being excavated by the University of Bonn.  The day we were there was the last day of excavation for this season because the rains will soon begin and then it will be impossible to get up to the site.  They will start again in April or so.  These dwellings are being excavated and rebuilt using the original technique: adobe bricks coated with more mud on the outside.  A large amount of ceramics has been found at the site.  It is not clear as yet whether the this was merely a ceremonial site where people came at certain times of the year or whether it was a habitation site occupied all year round.

Close to the nearest dwellings is a rectangular court with a double wall on three sides.  Apparently this was some kind of game court (ball games?) and there was seating on the three sides with the walls.

As we wandered around the site, a condor did indeed pass by!

The mystery is the water supply.  So far no water supply has been found in the immediate vicinity.  Two hydrologists were prospecting.  A little policeman on duty to guard the site, who provided the scant information we managed to glean, took us to see a natural well in the stone.  They have gone down 30m. and it still continues but it is now filled with leaves and vegetation to 8 m. from the surface.  It never fills up with water which would seem to indicate that it communicates with some underground stream but as yet no information is available on this.

He also took us to see a tree, the suburú, which drips sap all day long every day.  If you stand under it it feels like it is about to rain, large drops falling on your head.  This creates a special microclimate under the tree.

So far no publications have been produced on the excavations at Samaipata so there are no explanatory pamphlets or notes at the site.  This is a pity because I think people would derive greater benefit from their visit if some information was available.  However, according to the policeman, they are now preparing some explanatory boards which will be posted around the rock, and later a publication will be produced with the information they have got so far.

THE DOWNFALL OF OP

2006-01-22T09:49:00.000+01:00

THE DOWNFALL OF O.P.

At the beginning of November the annual Feria took place in Cochabamba and the project took a stand. The Cochabamba tea representative, who owes the tea company a lot of money, wanted to have half the stand for himself, but Robert said he could not because the deposit he had made on behalf of the project was not really a payment made out of his own pocket as he had construed it but was merely being deducted from his large debt.  So, the stand was to be shared by all the plants and he could participate purely as a guest of the project.  Before this was all thrashed out this man had arranged for his daughter and a friend of hers to be on the stand selling tea.  However, when his original plans were forcibly changed, he decided only to have his daughter on the stand and, although he paid the other girl, she was not to be there.  Nobody in the project knew anything about this arrangement at all.

On the last day of the Feria the girl and her mother arrived on the scene and, when the mother saw the cholitas (indigenous girls wearing their polleras or voluminous skirts), she was furious, rounded on G. and said "So you turned down my daughter in favour of these cholitas!"

"No, not me," he said. "It was him" pointing at René, the manager of the dairy.  Then the woman launched herself at René, but he pointed out that the project worked with these people and that is why they were there and that Mr. G’s arrangements had nothing to do with him.  Whereupon, she turned around again,
"You poof, so you are blaming someone else for your own scheming.  Take that!" and she slapped him squarely on the face.  (The insult she used is very strong here in Bolivia where nobody ever uses swear words or insults unless tempers are running high, and even then it is not very common).

G's daughter, seeing the women slap her father, slapped her friend's mother.  At that precise moment O. P. Z. arrived on the scene.  He is a Peruvian tea consultant who was working for the project when Robert arrived.  He is tall, well-built and pompous in the extreme.  Walking in his usual decorous fashion, he had barely turned the corner of the stand when G ´s daughter said, "It´s his fault".  The irate mother turned on him and started to vent her anger, shouting "You son of a bitch!" and jumping up to slap him on the face.  The cholitas were all scandalised at such language and their eyes were out on stalks seeing the whole affair going on in the passage in front of the stand.  "Señora, señora" he said, but on she went slapping him, so he just slapped her back.  The daughter then ladled into him and he slapped her too.  At that point the daughter warned that she was going to get her boyfriend and then he would see .....

The boyfriend duly arrived, gave O. P. Z. a few good left hooks as a result of which he had to have six stitches above his eyebrows.  Then events took an unexpected turn.  A girl who was working on the stand next door came rushing into the passage, squared up to the boyfriend saying "So, you are her boyfriend!  Take that!  (wallop, wallop) I am supposed to be your girlfriend.  Since when have you got another girlfriend?" and a great barney ensued between "the boyfriend" and the two girlfriends who started pulling each other's hair.

When the boyfriend saw the great gash in O. P.’s forehead and realised that he had beaten up "un señor" he was repentant and kept begging pardon - maybe as a way of extricating himself from the insults raining down on his head from the two girlfriends.

The only disappointment about this whole affair is that the video cameraman was so shocked that he didn't film the episode so we have no documentary evidence.  One thing is sure: never again will the campesinos stand in awe of O. P.!  Now Robert just says "señoras, señoras" and everyone falls about laughing just thinking of pompous O. in such demeaning circumstances.

TOTAL ECLIPSE

2005-12-15T15:28:00.000+01:00

TOTAL ECLIPSE

On Thursday November 3rd between 7:30 and 9:30 a.m. we had a total solar eclipse.  Scientists came from all over the world to Bolivia to observe the event because at Huancaya near Potosí, which is at an altitude of over 4.500m, visibility was expected to be excellent.

During the preceding days there were announcements on the radio informing people that this occurrence would take place, that the sky would grow dark and it would become chilly, that animals might get agitated but that it was a natural phenomenon and nobody should be afraid.  Rigoberta Menchú, the Nobel Peace prizewinner from Mexico, also came, and she said that solar eclipses are related to life not death and people had nothing to fear.

It was a clear sunny morning.  At 7:45a.m. when the sun is already fairly high in the tropics, the shadows began to lengthen a little and the quality of the air began to change.  It gradually became cooler.  However, due to the strength of the tropical sun, the light from the halo still around the sun at the point of total eclipse was so strong that it never really became dark.  In fact, at that point both the temperature and the quality of light closely resembled those of a perfect summer´s day in Scotland!  By 9:30 the event had passed and the sun returned to its usual scorching intensity.

ACCIDENTS

2005-12-14T13:36:00.000+01:00

ACCIDENTS

In the middle of October one of the dairy project's drivers had an accident on his way to Santa Cruz to make a delivery.  He had set out about 3:30a.m. and at Entre Ríos, some 70 Kms. away (It was dark, naturally),  a drunk cyclist came out of a "night-club".  A bus and a van were following close behind the lorry so he could not brake or they would have run into him.  He swerved into the ditch but still did not avoid the cyclist who was thrown up on to the bonnet, hit the windscreen which broke, and then fell into the ditch.  The serious part is that the driver did not stop - he drove on to Santa Cruz. When he called from there he was not sure whether the cyclist was dead or not.

When Robert heard this he was furious, and when the fellow came back from Santa Cruz he was dismisssed immediately.  René, the manager of the dairy, and Wilfredo, the production manager, went on a recce to Entre Ríos to find out exactly what the situation was.  They went to the police with the pretext that a person from the place had been contracted to do an inventory at the dairy and had absconded with the key to the cold store, which is why they were trying to track him down.  Did the police know of anyone of that name (an invented one, of course).  No, they did not.  Had there been any accidents recently - maybe that is why he had not come back to work.  Yes, there had been.  Last night.  A fellow on a bicycle had been hit and was in the hospital.  His boss was paying the medical bill.  Lucky that it must have been a small car because if it had been a truck he would be dead!  (Just goes to show how alcohol relaxes the muscles making drunks less prone to breaking bones).

Reprehensible behaviour to run off like that after an accident.  And it is.  However, things are not so clear-cut as they appear in the context of the first world.  If he had stopped, the police would have put him straight in jail and he would have stayed there for an age until (if ever) his case came up for trial.  Meanwhile the police would be trying to extract bribes from him.

The lawyer who came to do some work for the UN (the nephew of the President) told us that standard practice among lorry drivers is to carry a crowbar or some similar implement.  If they have a serious accident, they get out and kill the victim, because it is better to have a dead person than one maimed for life.  If the person is dead the company can go to the family and pay them US$1,000 or so compensation and that keeps them happy.  However, if the person is injured and maimed the problem is not the victim or even the family.  It is the police.  They keep coming back demanding more and more money to keep quiet or else they will concoct evidence and have the person in jail for the rest of his life.  This minimum jail term is likely to be around 10 years for an accident.

And jail conditions are not like they are in even the worst and most over-crowded jail in Europe.  According to a Human Rights report just out, overcrowding in the Cochabamba jail is of the ratio of 100:1.  There are 100 people in the space designed a hundred years or more ago for one person.  There are only two latrines and no showers for all the inmates and there are no kitchen facilities: the prisoner's family must bring food every day or bring parcels of ingredients which the prisoners cook for themselves in any corner they can find. If he has no family then he must buy food from the other prisoners so long as he has money to do so.  If not, then he dies of hunger and that, according to the report, is not such an uncommon occurrence.  The worst of it all is that 93% of the prisoners in the jail are still waiting for their cases to come up for trial and they have mostly been there for a minimum of 5 years.

In the case of prisoners detained under Law 1008 (the US-inspired anti-drug law) no bail is admitted.   The director of the jail himself gave the researchers examples of people who were totally innocent – their innocence had been proved on up to two occasions at the local court and at the Cochabamba High Court, - but they had to wait till their case came up before the Supreme Court at Sucre before they were released.  In most cases the evidence was cooked up by the UMOPAR or they had forced people to sign or put their thumbmark on "confessions" when they were under torture - burned with cigarette ends, electric shocks on the genitals, being hung upside down for days, etc.  One man had the powder used in tear gas bombs blown into his eyes with the result that he is now totally blind: he was a carpenter here in Chimoré. The director of the prison allows him to set up a little stand at the door of the prison and sell knick-knacks to people in order to be able to eat.

How´s that for justice?

No wonder the guy just kept going!

DEATH

2005-12-13T16:36:00.000+01:00

DEATH

Towards the end of October news came that the daughter of the President of the Villa 14 Association had died.  Ignacio is a nice man and Robert went to see him the day of the funeral.  The girl was 15 years old and pregnant.  The schoolteacher had forced her to stay behind after school. Then he took her out of school and had her at his house (Her cousin who was also beginning to receive the same sort of attention opted to drop out of school).  This goes to show the kind of power individuals with a certain social standing (and that of schoolteachers is not so high) have in the community.  When she died her hands were completely red and green stuff was coming out of her breasts so the suspicion is that she was trying to take something to abort.

Ignacio was absolutely distraught. He said to Robert.

"I had so many hopes for her.  In our lives you must have hope.  That is the very last thing you can lose.  She had been to school since she was five and she was clever, and now ....... look what we have come to.  She is dead."

Robert went to see the doctor to find out if he had seen the girl and what he thought of the strange symptoms when she died, but he said that he had not treated her and knew nothing about it.  There was no autopsy.

The day before the funeral was a bit of a drama because the family wanted to operate on the girl to extract the foetus.  This is an ancient Aymara practice now imbued with Catholic ideology.  They believe that a pregnant woman should not be buried with the foetus still inside, because the foetus should receive a separate burial.  If not the soul of the baby will go to limbo and will not settle and keep trying to come back.  Cleto Rodríguez, a Quechua, and the manager of the Association's plant which is in the project, managed to convince them that this was an old-fashioned idea and that there was no need for it.  So the girl was buried and life goes on.

However, in view of the behaviour of the schoolteacher which can only be classified as gross professional misconduct, Robert had a chat with Cleto and he is going to start a campaign to have him removed from the village before he does any more harm with someone else's daughter.  He also went to the house and removed the girl's things which he had there: 4 photographs, an apron and a pair of shoes.

What a pity.  What unnecessary suffering and all because the social structures are feudal giving excessive power to insignificant individuals against whom the families have no power to act.

November is the month when the dead are commemorated.  The week leading up to November 2nd. there is feverish activity at the cemeteries.  The vegetation is cleared away from around the graves and people decorate the tombs. On November 2nd., All Souls' Day,  the centre of activity is the cemetery:  in the morning everyone goes there to light candles at the graves and lay flowers.  The day before, the children shape babies out of flour dough and these are taken and deposited on the tombs.  The family also prepares the favourite meals of the dead people whose graves they are going to visit and the meals are carried to the cemetery where a plate with their favourite food is laid on the tomb of each dead person.  Then the family sits down around the grave and share the same meal with much celebration.

Rather than a cause for mourning, this is a day to celebrate with the deceased.  After the meal at the cemetery everyone troops off to certain spots where swings have been set up.  Two tall tree trunks are set into the ground with a crossbar to make the swing structure.  Then  a long rope is tied to this to form the swing.  There are two side ropes attached to the swing so that it can be manoevred.  In front and behind two other smaller "doorframes" are erected and decorated with coloured ribbon and flowers.  On one of these frames a number of small woven baskets containing goodies are hung.  The idea is that the girl who gets on the swing is swung up higher and higher by the two women pulling the side ropes.  When the person is high enough (if she ever gets that far) she must stick her legs out and try and grab one of these baskets with her feet. This is for the diversion of women only and they all wear a new pollera (skirt) for the occasion.  There is much merrymaking and music, although the music is special songs and tunes for the dead, not cuecas and other rhythms which are played at weddings.  This festivity involves the women much more than the men who are bystanders.  The idesa is that the young men can have an opportunity to see the young marriageable girls and should he like one he can “robar la cholita” or steal the girl.  They then set up home together. Tankers of chicha are brought in from Cochabamba for the occasion so that there will be no shortage.

I am told that the similar festivities will take place on November 30th, St. Andrew's Day.

Diplomatic Visit

2005-12-11T16:16:00.000+01:00

MICHAEL HOWARD

14 Sept. 1994

On August 27th the British Home Secretary and his wife visited this area.  Apparently Britain had financed one of the infrastucture programmes (latrines) being implemented by another branch of the UN under the  command of one of the most undesirable individuals you could hope to clap eyes on.  He was coming to inaugurate the water system - but there was no water because the road building company had broken the pipe and refused to mend it again saying that it would cost too much.  Apart from this minor inconvenience, the inauguration went ahead!

Since Michael Howard is Jewish and therefore required a kosher kitchen, the only decent place for him to eat was at the dairy complex, so Robert was asked if it could be used and he said yes.  They were to bring along all the things they needed (I highly suspect that the people actually in charge of preparing the food (the owners of the hotel in Villa Tunari where all the US DEA personnel stay and therefore agents of repression) knew as much about kashruth as fly in the air (I saw no signs of different sets of milk and meat pots and all that) - but never mind, what the eyes don't see .....  We were sent a Union Jack to hoist on a flagpole!

They were to arrive on Saturday at midday by helicopter.  This meant that on Friday the helicopters had to come in for a trial run and Robert painted the helipad sign which made it easier for them to calculate their landing. Then, on the following day everything went smoothly  We had nothing to do with the event since it was not our show, but they got a tour around the dairy and all that stuff.  Robert was not here because he had left to go to Argentina.

The point is that apparently Michael Howard had wanted to talk to the campesinos and find out their points of view and so on, but the government sent the invitations via DIRECO , the repressive body which is always beating them up, so, naturally, nobody went and his visit to that particular area was a disaster.  This meant that the Minister of the Interior who was in charge of arranging the whole thing lost face, got mad, and, on his way back from here, had one of the most important campesino leaders arrested.

Well, that caused a great flurry and then rumours started flying around that the helicopters had come into the dairy to do a recce and so on, with the result that Filippo, who was left in charge of the project while Robert was away, did not want me to stay here on my own.  I did not think that there was any danger but, at the same time, I did not want to give him any more worries since this was his first time at the head of the project, so Monica and I (plus the dogs) went to Santa Cruz.  Robert then decided to cut short his trip to Argentina and come back early, so we came back with him.

Here is another example of how bigwigs do things in a totally stupid way with no consideration for how their actions will affect other people.  In fact, I don't think they even realise that they DO affect other people.  In any case, I think the British ambassador, who is apparently a very nice man, ought to have arranged things in a different way that did not involve the military, particularly in an area like this where people are so suspicious of all these armed bodies.  If I ever get the chance to tell him so  I will.

The irony of the whole thing is that the UNDCP boss, an Italian called Sandro Calvani, took umbrage and complained that the project had not cooperated and a whole tissue of other figments of his imagination, since the only bit of the visit which went smoothly was the time they spent here when strictly speaking we had nothing to do with it at all.

All the La Paz and Vienna people are currently running around like mad things because now is the time for capturing funding, and they are all trying to woo potential funding nations with a whole load of garbage.  If they would only show the realities I am sure people would much prefer it that way.

As far as the US is concerned, there is no point in writing to them  Their intervention in Ireland is based wholely and solely on the importance of the Irish vote there.  Here it is the US which is funding all the repression and training all the forces which implement it.  Why do you think they get involved in Haiti?  Only to look after their own interests.  And as far as Cuba is concerned, they are wooing the vote of all the right-wing Cuban exiles in Miami.  It seems to me that, in this political game, there are no objective, well thought-out decisions and policies,  only reaction to lobby pressures and vote-catching.

As far as democracy goes, the whole thing is a farce.  For the best part of this century the US, that great paragon of democracy, has set up and maintained all the dictatorships in Latin America.  In fact, I understand that the new US ambassador to Bolivia was the person responsible for setting up the Pinochet coup which overthrew Salvador Allende in Chile in 1972.  It makes me want to throw up.  I have written a great screed which I have sent to Friends of the Earth and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds informing them of the situation here and asking them to exert pressure on European governments to include condition clauses in their aid programmes.  I don't know if anything will come of it, but it is worth a try.  I wrote to Friends of the Earth shortly after we came here telling them that ICI is selling Gramoxone, a papraquat-based weed-killer which is banned, and they have taken the matter up, so maybe something can be done by using large pressure group organizations.  One thing is for sure, you can't sit around and do nothing.

A TRIP TO ARGENTINA

2005-12-10T09:23:00.000+01:00

A TRIP TO ARGENTINA

August 25 1994

On Monday August 21st. we set out on what was to be an overland journey to Argentina where Robert was to look at machinery for the  dairy plant and do some other business.  We took our own car because it is more comfortable and because we were travelling with the dogs.  The journey to Santa Cruz was uneventful and Robert went off to do business there on Monday afternoon while I took the dogs to the vet to get their vaccinations up to date and also to get an international travel certificate.

On Tuesday morning we started off fairly early.  We had been told that we had to take the old Cochabamba road for 13 Kms. and then turn left.  Getting about in Bolivia is no mean feat because, apart from the odd fluke now and again, there are no road signs whatsoever.  The turn-off was between two checkpoints (there are plenty of those).  We passed one checkpoint and the only turnoff we could see on the left was a dirt track, so we carried on.  Shortly we came to the next checkpoint where we were informed that the main road to Argentina was indeed the dirt track which we had just passed, so we turned around and made our way back.

The dirt track was dry and sandy and grew more so as we went on, to the extent that on some stretches we were driving over veritable sand dunes where the sand reached up to the car axles.The vegetation was arid and sparse, in sharp contrast to the exuberance of the Chapare.  I think there may once have been exuberant vegetation here too because, from time to time, great dead trunks with lianas entwined about them stood in splendid isolation amid the low scrub, but the trees had no doubt been cut down to make way for cattle farming and this dry panorama is the result.  Dead, dry, and deadly!

We carried on.  Not only was the countryside arid and sad, but the people and even the animals too. Nothing happened.  Time stood still.  The dogs lay unmoving.  The donkeys hung their heads. This surely is pure misery: ramshackle wattle habitations; desolate poverty; no water; no electricity; no nothing ....... only fruitless striving and barren bleakness.  In comparison to this horror the people in the Chapare are kings and queens.  They may be poor. They may have as little as these other people, but they are surrounded by a natural paradise which, in some measure, counteracts the misery.

When you think the road can get no worse - it does just that.  If driving on the Chapare roads is like riding in an Irish jaunting car, this is like hanging on for grim life (or death) to a bucking bronco.  I thought I had a bad back, but this trip must surely have fixed it - or finished it.  The "road" which is unsurfaced and full of potholes is a rally track second to none.  You have to weave around to find the spot with the fewest holes and where the car wheels will not sink in and never come out.  When it rains it must be absolutely impassable, because the sand will turn to runny mud and it will be like a skating rink.  We carried on.

We stopped and asked a lorry driver what the road was like further on.  He replied that for another hour and a half it would be the same or worse and then it would improve.  We carried on.  After an hour and a half we came to an asphalted stretch which lasted for about a mile.  We then had to be diverted into a dry river bed about a mile wide where the wheels sank deep into the ruts and the sand mound in the middle rubbed against the undercarriage of the car, which, you must remember, is a high level four-wheel drive. This was Río Seco (Dry River). After the river bed there was another stretch of asphalt along which we sped for some miles thinking that this was the end of the jogging and jumping.

Then , just as suddenly as it had begun, the asphalt came to an end.  The "road" turned into a settlement.  A clutch of goats lay in the shade of a low building on the first corner on the right as we turned in.  After that building there was an embryonic "square".  The left side of the road was lined with ramshackle, tumble-down wooden or wattle houses. In all, the street would be about 100 yards long.  A bus stood at the one end opposite the goats loaded up with bundles on the roof and a group of men were talking to the driver.  Standing in all its incongruity in the middle of the "square" was a satellite dish - bright and shiny and proud and new - amid the dusty, sandy, sleepy panorama.

The street was cut off by a check-point.  The police control, yet another tumble-down edifice painted a sad shade of pale green, stood at the end of the "square".  The man operating the checkpoint languished in a hammock which swung to and fro like something out of a Spaghetti western.  He did not rise.  Robert got out of the car.  He rose and came lurching forward in a state of total inebriation.  To the police post.  Yes, this is the road to Argentina.  But how does it continue?  The road stops here.  Yes, just turn right and then left over the bridge.

An impressive bridge spanned the river bed.  The Río Grande.  We took to the bridge, which at that moment was being crossed by a load of schoolchildren going home for lunch.  The bridge is the railway bridge!  Once we had started to cross it, there was no turning back.  It creaked.  It groaned.  It seemed to sway. The water seemed an awful long way down.  Half the slats were missing and huge nails stuck up in greedy anticipation of perforating a tyre.

With a sigh of relief we reached the end.  Then to our horror we saw that the road on the other side was a continuation of the first part of the journey - no asphalt, just sand and rocks and stones.  At that point Robert turned the car around and we returned to Santa Cruz.  It had taken four and a half hours to travel 100Kms.

This was Camiri, the place where Che Guevara was assassinated.  What a waste.  What a wasteland.  And what utter uselessness.  A sadder place to end one's days I have never seen.

If it served any purpose at all, this abortive trip showed me why Che Guevara's revolution did not prosper in Bolivia.  It never could.  Despite the abject poverty, the place he chose could never be the birthplace of a revolution.  Peasants are notoriously conservative everywhere, but peasants living in these conditions, scattered throughout the countryside and scraping a subsistence from the soil, every man for himself, could never agglutinate to form a united front or to struggle for a common good.  Just filling their own bellies is too hard a task.  If he had gone to the mining areas he might have stood a chance, but this was always a non-starter.  He did not do his homework and the effort was doomed to failure even before it got under way.

Some days later Robert made the trip to Argentina by plane.  He thought it was a magnificent country with a natural potential greater than any country he has visited so far.  The people are highly educated and he was most impressed.  He spent most time in Rosario that stands on the wet pampa on the banks of the River Paraná which, at that particular point, is 12 Kms. wide.  The city, which grew up because this was a natural stopping off point for people travelling across the pampa, is quite magnificent with beautiful buildings of many different architectural styles, because people from 40 different nationalities helped build the city  The British stamp is also there because they built the railways in Argentina and there is a fairly large Irish contingent too.  The only thing wrong with Argentina is its government which is implementing World Bank neo-liberal economic policies which are bringing the country to its knees.  Rosario also has huge parks which are very beautiful.  Anyway, Robert was most impressed with Argentina.

XABIER AZKARGORTA

2005-12-09T15:41:00.000+01:00

XABIER AZKARGORTA

Aug. 20 1994

On August 16th.  Xabier Azkagorta, the Basque doctor who trained the Bolivian national team and got them into the World Cup for the first time in their history, came to the Chapare as a guest of the project.  At the beginning of the year, we had gone to see him at his hotel when the team were in Cochabamba, and he promised then that he would visit the area.  It was not possible before the Cup due to the pressures of work, but he fulfilled his promise and came now.

It was decided that this had to be a holiday for all the Associations taking part in the project and a five-a-side football championship was arranged: every association has its own team and so does the project personnel.  Robert went to Cochabamba to meet him and when they arrived in Chimoré he was greeted by the mayor and other worthies.  The army and UMOPAR were also keen to get a look in but events took place ignoring their presence.  After a rest at MILKA, the dairy plant, they went to Ivirgarzama, the place where the plant is located, where he was also received by the "town" dignitaries.  In the evening there was a dinner at the dairy dining-room which was attended by all.

However, the following day was the BIG DAY.  He kicked off the football championship and then we set off for Villa Unión, one of the more outlying places involved in the project.  There the "cholitas" or Andean women who wear traditional dress were to have a game of five-a-side.  The settlement has two teams.  Much giggling went on as Xabier greeted the members of the team, because the unmarried members could not give him a kiss and went running off giggling behind their hands.

He coached them for a while and then the game was due to begin, but there was no whistle.  Eventually a whistle was turned out of somewhere and the game began.  Xabier was the referee.  They played barefoot. There was much running and falling and a great deal of fun was had by all. Aidé, the health worker, was affronted and furious because she was replaced by a substitute.  Imagine! She, the promoter of the sport in the first place!  Anyway, later she laughed about it and all was well.

Then there were the inevitable speeches.  The whole affair was apotheosic.  That a man so famous and popular should come and visit them, this was a miracle indeed.  But then, if he could come and see the reality of their lives, why could the government ministers not come and do the same instead of calling them all drug-pedlars and smugglers when they have never seen them or spoken to them?  Much was made of the visit and the TV cameras whirred away all day long recording what everyone had to say.  Azkargorta said he had seen no huge mansions with swimming-pools and people lounging drinking whiskies.  What he had seen were hard-working people trying to make ends meet and educate their children.

Before we left we visited the house of one of the community leaders.  A series of wooden poles form the structure, which is open on all four sides.  The roof is of corrugated asbestos.  The original house standing nearby is smaller and has a thatched roof.  Between these two stands the kitchen which is closed in with wooden slats and has a thatched roof.

In the evening in Ivirgarzama he was invited by the town to a civic reception, where he was asked to make a speech.  What he said, simple as it may sound, made a great impact on the people.  Do not defend heroic stands but intelligent ones.  Decide what you are capable of achieving and then go all out to do so, but make no excuses if you fail.  We are all entitled to failures if they are honest ones. And then we must analyze our failures and learn from them.

Proof of the impact he made was forthcoming a few days later when Robert met the President of the Civic Committee.  They had just had a long meeting about the transfer of responsibilities in the field of education.  He said, "We have been putting into practice the advice Dr. Azkargorta gave us and we have been trying to define just how much we can reasonably bite off."

It is amazing how much one person can affect the lives of a multitude of others.  We hope that he will also help to tell the truth about what he saw here.  That would be no mean feat.

AUGUST FIRES

2005-12-08T15:03:00.000+01:00

AUGUST FIRES

15.08.1994

Well, it is August (end of September now) - winter in the southern hemisphere.  It has not rained for several weeks and the rivers, now sluggish, carry very little water.  However, it is not cold, although the morning air has an indefinable, unmistakably winter quality about it despite the warmth. It may be the clarity, the stillness, I don't know. Daytime temperatures are in the region of 30-34ºC. falling to around 18ºC. at night.  The difference is in the humidity.  It is much drier now.  You do not normally sweat so much.  The first day I did not sweat since I arrived in the Chapare was May 10th.  No doubt the torrents will begin again soon and along with them the constant rivulets of sweat rolling down every part of the body.

The most outstanding feature of August days are the smoke-filled skies.  The sunlight is blocked out by the ever-present pall. This is the tragedy of the tropics and the whole Amazon system.  In August the settlers "chaquean" or slash and burn the vegetation on their properties in preparation for a new sowing season, or to clear new land.  Trees with a circumference of 2 metres or more are hacked to the ground and burned to ashes, the stumps sticking up into the air like fingers accusing humanity of the devastation that we cause.  Charred and blackened and scorched, the Pachamama surely should demand more respect of her children. Maybe she is too week to fight us any more. The original tribal peoples who populated these areas, the Yukis and the Yuracarés, are traditionally nomadic hunter-gatherers.  The settlers who have come in under the government-sponsored settlement programme are people from the altiplano where no trees are to be found.  They do not understand their environment and, perhaps involuntarily, strive to turn it into something akin to what they left behind, forgetting that the reason they left it was that they could not scrape a living from the soil.  The exuberance of the vegetation in places such as this depends precisely on the abundant foliage falling to the ground and decomposing there to form a fertile surface, because the topsoil is a mere 10-12 cm. deep in most places.  Once the forest cover is removed the soil grows impoverished and soon will support no growth whatsoever.  In La Paz the skies are similarly darkened with all the smoke coming from El Beni and Pando, the Amazon areas, and when planes come in to land at Santa Cruz airport the pilots announce that visibility is reduced due to the smoke from the burning Amazon basin in Brazil.

No programme contemplates this, the most serious of all the problems, and if nothing is done - and soon - the damage will be irreparable.  I know many people say that the conservationist voices raised in protest exaggerate and that things are not as bad as they say.  Things ARE as bad as they say - if not worse.  Tropical deforestation is increasing and accelerating. Santa Cruz, the neighbouring "boom" area which deforested earlier to make way for cattle grazing, rice, soya, sugar-cane, etc. has had to be declared a "disaster area" due to drought, and the continuing deforestation of the Chapare is aggravating the situation. Robert and Filippo are trying to get an environmental aspect written into the project specifications, but it is hard work indeed getting these goons (officialdom, I mean) to understand anything at all, even when it is staring them in the face.  I have written to a  number of organizations to try and get environmental condition clauses written into all aid programmes, but I don't know how effective that will be.  It is worth a try.

And still, as winter rolls into spring or, perhaps more accurately, the rainy season approaches, the birds are beginning to build their nests.  Crested oropendolas, fairly large black birds with a spectacularly yellow tail, weave their long pendulous nests which hang from the branches of the trees and sway in the breeze.  The male sits close by his edifice in the hope of attracting a female.  He sings his fluty song and with each melody it seems as though he will topple off the branch because he leans over precariously at the start of each melodic phrase.  The lady comes and he leads her on a guided tour to have a look at his handiwork from every angle.  If she is impressed she will stay.  If not, off she flies to examine the fruits of someone else´s industry.

The tiny hummingbird is also making its nest.  In sharp contrast to the conspicuous palace of the oropendola, this is a tiny, discreet affair carefully hidden under the leaves of a small tree.  It is no bigger than half an egg-shell, fairly similar in shape and just as delicate with scraps of feather and soft material woven into the fabric.  The first one he made was found by a cat which destroyed it so we hope that the new one will survive.  The danger they face is that the trees they choose are fairly low and so are accessible to cats and children.  Robert has warned all the children that if he sees anyone touching a nest some dire consequence will fall upon their heads.  I never cease to marvel at the diminutiveness of these tiny creatures hovering in an iridescent whirr

There are lots of other birds returning now after the "winter", but I do not know their names.  Monica´s (Filippo, the agronomist´s girlfriend) mother came from Houston Texas and I asked her to bring me a book on the birds of this area, so I am learning a little more each day.  Monica´s mother is English-born, was married to an English-Pole (if you know what I mean) and they lived in Texas where he is a cardiologist and she used to be a pathologist but 15 years ago changed over to psychiatry.  Now that's some change-over!!  She is a serious bird-watcher so I learned a bit from her too.  My list has increased to include the yellow-rumped cacique, the smooth-billed aní, the great tinamou, called yut´hu in Quechua (I have only heard this one, not seen it),  the vermilion flycatcher, the pale-throated tapaculos ( a kind of wren), the swallow-tanager - the male a brilliant turquoise blue and the female emerald green - the yellow-bellied tyrannulet and a number of others which I am not so sure about yet.  Even if you are not keen on birds, the names are so interesting in themelves that it is nice just to read them.  The one thing I regret is not having the video camera to film all these things - it was stolen en route, as you know.

DIA DE LA PATRIA

2005-12-06T15:23:00.000+01:00

DIA DE LA PATRIA

08.08.1994

Well, on Saturday August 6th.  I witnessed something I thought I would never see -  Robert in a parade!  August 6th. is Bolivian Independence Day and there is a parade in every town, no matter how minuscule. The point is that every organization is obliged to take part: anyone who doesn't participate loses a day's pay.  All the schoolchildren parade along with their teachers, and in front of every group one girl is dressed wearing the traditional costume of one of the regions of Bolivia - La Paz, Cochabamba, Santa Cruz, Potosí, Oruro, Beni, Pando, Chuquisaca and Tarija. There is even one girl dressed as "Litoral" or coast, a reminder of the days when Bolivia was not landlocked.  The "theft" of this strip of coastal land is a thorn in Bolivia´s flesh and continues to rock bilateral relations between Bolivia and Chile. There is a group of "waripoleras", the Bolivian equivalent of majorettes (How they could bear to march along wearing tights and thigh-high plastic boots - black or white - is a wonder of the modern world!), the campesino women who sell food in the market, representatives of every organization of any consequence, AND Robert's project members. They were the only representatives of UN organizations who took part. The army and the UMOPAR brought up the rear of the parade. Each section of the parade had a banner declaring its name and function or a flag.  At intervals down the parade there were bands - school bands and military ones.

The parade was supposed to begin at 8.30 but did not get under way until about 10.  The sun was blistering down as they wended their way along the main road (All traffic was stopped) and then turned up into the town.  All the people taking part then had to stand in the sweltering heat on an open patch of ground for nearly two hours while the mayor, the campesino representative, the educational authorites and the settlers' representative all made patriotic speeches interspersed with poems exalting the glories of Bolívar and Field Marshall Sucre who won freedom for  Bolivia at the Battle of Ayacucho, wresting the country from the yoke of Spanish colonialism.  A native poet also recited poems in Quechua.  The campesino representative made a speech which for the people who live here was very significant indeed.  He referred to the oppression and brutality of the military and UMOPAR right to their very faces as they stood in front of the "Altar Patrio" adorned with the flag of Bolivia, and photos of Bolívar, Sucre and the current President, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada.

After all the speechmaking, the parade formed again and they all had to march past the "Altar Patrio".  By 1 o'clock the affair was over and we could all go home for lunch.

In the afternoon we had promised to visit one of the project communities - "Villa Unión" - where they were celebrating the anniversary of the foundation of their community.  They had asked Robert and Filippo to donate football strips and a football to the community.  The "road" to Villa Unión is a dirt track 14 Kms. long which goes inland from the main road.  The track crosses 10 streams and 14 rivulets and to get over them you have to drive over tree trunks which span the rivers, but somebody has to get out to direct you across them because you must get the wheels in exactly the right place or else you fall off.

When we arrived the whole community was gathered in what will one day be the main square.  There they have a minute school no bigger than the average western kitchen, a tiny health post made of wood where they have 2 beds for women in labour, a shelf with some medicines, a table, a chair and a small gas fridge which they use to keep vaccines in.  Next to that there is a wooden Pawichi with a palm roof which serves as the communal meeting house.  These traditional dwellings are by far and away the most suitable for these climes.  The air circulates freely so that the interior is fresh and cool.  When it rains the water runs of the palm roof.  There are two improvements I would make.  The first is to put mosquito netting inside the wooden slats and have a screen door.  The other one is to make a floor either of wood or some other solid material so that it can be kept clean.  In front of that there is an open space with grass where they were holding a football competition.

We were offered something to eat and drink and then the highlight of the afternoon was a five-a-side footbal match between the girls of the community and a girls' team from another place.  It was a sight to behold these girls wearing their voluminous polleras playing football barefoot.  They tied 2-2 and had to have a penalty shoot-out.  The girls from the Andino community won.  By that time the sun was beginning to set and we had to start out in order to reach the road before night fell.

The fun and games over, today  (Aug. 7) the panorama is quite different.  The military are swarming all over the place with riot helmets and sub-machine guns.  The campesinos are trying to hold a meeting at their headquarters next door to Robert's office and there are thousands of people in Chimoré from all over the territory, but the military and UMOPAR  have broken it up. .  Depending on the outcome of this meeting there may be another blockade starting from next Monday.  We have to take Ana, Nini and Hugo who are here on holidays to Santa Cruz on Saturday so that they can catch their plane on Sunday.  With a bit of luck we will get back here before any blockade comes into force.  (As it happens, no events of any consequence occurred then, but the Government-cum-US "New Dawn" Operation has continued and many people have been detained and thrown into jail.)

Dull life here is not!

HISTORIA DE MI FAMIL

2005-12-05T16:57:00.000+01:00

HISTORIA DE MI FAMILIA

Aidé
8 de agosto de 1994

Antes mi familia era muy pobre. Cuando yo tenía 5 años estuvimos en Argentina.  Mi mamá tenía trabajo y mi papá no tenía trabajo.  Así pasaron los años.  Después dos hermanas.  Seguíamos sufriendo.  Hemos regresado otra vuelta a Bolivia.  Hasta ahorita somos 8 hermanos: 4 hombres y 4 mujeres. Me llamo Aidé y Juan Carlos, Hugo, Angel, Ramiro, Albelo, Jimena, Sumilda y Rocío.

En Bolivia hemos mejorado lo que hemos vivido todos los años.  Mi papá comenzó a construir una casa en Cochabamba camino a Tarata Km. 22.  Ahí tenemos una casa más o menos bien.  Tenía luz y agua.  Seguíamos en la pobreza.  Mi papá era albañil.  Trabajaba en todas partes.  No tenía a sus padres.  Mi mamá igual.  Mi papá tenía que regresar a Argentina a buscar trabajo.  Otra vuelta se fue mi papá y ha mandado plata para que nos vayamos.  Yo tenía que quedarme porque tenía a mi esposo y mi hijo de dos meses.  Tenía a mi esposo con 15 años.  Por eso tenía que quedarme de mi mamá y mis hermanos.  Soy la única boliviana.  Todos son argentinos.

En allá se sienten mejor.  Tienen casa y coche, también trabajo y mis hermanos están estudiando y están trabajando. Mi madre me dice:  "Tus hermanos ya son jóvenes".  Los 4 me mandan carta y muchos saludos y abrazos y besos.  Me dicen mis hermanos: "Pronto estaremos visitándote, hermana",  me dicen mis hermanos.

Yo no tengo a nadie aquí en Bolivia y vivo sola con mis hijos.  Tenemos chaco y ganados y cultivos.  Yo trabajo sola.  Tengo 2 hijos: uno se llama Darwin y la otra Lineli.  Mi esposo está estudiando en Cochabamba medicina. Antes era promotor 5 años.  Ahora me toca a mí.  Yo también soy promotora de salud 1 año y más.  A mí me gusta ir a los cursos.  Siempre voy.

Mi esposo es buena gente.  No sabemos pelear.  Es de Punata, Villa San José.  Se llama John Natalio Zapata y tiene 26 años.  Es mayor de mí con 4 años.  Vivimos 8 años y tenemos 2 hijos.  Ya no pensamos tener hijos.

Yo no podía hacer esta historia.  Para mí ha sido muy triste y muchos recuerdos.  Lo siento mucho.  Así es la vida.  Me siento sola y estoy acostumbrada a vivir sola en Bolivia.

Aidé
8 de agosto de 1994

Esta historia fue escrita a petición de Mary J. Rodríguez

NUEVO AMANECER

2005-12-04T15:30:00.000+01:00

NUEVO AMANECER

July 19, 1994

For the past few weeks there have been more incidents at the security blocks on the road and more military movements everywhere.  Last week the UMOPAR started doing checks on the road to see who didn't have their ID card on them.  Anyone who didn't was detained immediately, and if they happened to be peasant leaders they were badly mistreated. Several people had their faces smashed in when they were beaten with rifle butts.  They also broke into people's homes at night forcing the whole family to leave - men, women and children.  One pregnant women was knocked over on her stomach and miscarried afterwards.  Edgar tried to be of help while maintaining a low profile, by distributing medicine from our First Aid kit and giving people some money so they could see a doctor.

One of the officials in charge of this round-up said that the aim of the exercise was being achieved and that was to make all the people who grow coca come out.  Then, according to the government under-secretary, over the course of the next two months "we will hit them with all we've got".  All they've got would seem to involve 2 US AWACS and a refueling plane which Robert saw on the tarmac at Sta. Cruz airport.  These AWACS are the most sophisticated weapons of war around equipped with all the latest surveillance gadgetry which allows them to control absolutely everything which goes on on and under the ground as well as in the air.

The campesino leaders were to have met yesterday at the HQ next door to Robert's office in Chimoré but the UMOPAR prevented them from doing so.  The idea behind this is to provoke the campesinos into reacting violently but some behind-the-scenes persuading has been going on to convince them that the very last thing they should do is play into their hands, so it has now been decided that they will have a meeting in Cochabamba with the press and representatives of the Church present.   This is supposed to take place tomorrow (July 20th).

The last week of July they have continued to harass people, breaking into their homes at night and rounding them up and taking them to jail.  The other day Robert and Edgar went to the UMOPAR jail to try and get an association member freed.  He had been taken into custody because he did not have his ID card and had been in jail for three days.  They got him out.  He told us that they are given 2 plates of soup per day and are taken to the bathroom once a day.  If you need to go again at any other time, that is too bad because they will not allow it.  They are not allowed out for any exercise but must alternate between lying and sitting.  That day there were 260 men and boys in the cell.  Women are kept in a separate place and he did not know what happened to them.  People can be held for any length of time without charges until the Prosecutor gets around to dealing with their case.

The saddest and most worrying aspect of all this is that the Government people believe their own propaganda.  Last Sunday the lawyer who is supposed to be dealing with the matter of preparing to privatise these plants came from La Paz.  He is a nephew of the President.  When he arrived in Cochabamba he did not report at the office but just phoned after 4p.m. which is the time when the drivers are supposed to leave on Sundays in order to get to the Chapare not too long after dark.  When he was told that he had to hurry because these were the rules, he nearly had a fit, called Robert insulting him like mad and saying that nobody would tell him when to come or go when "he was putting his life at risk by coming to the Chapare".  They firmly believe, because they have convinced themselves of it, that these people are all bigtime traffickers and that they are the saviours of the country and the world by beating them all up.  Robert told him that if he thought he was putting his life at risk he should turn around and go straight back to La Paz.  Of course he came, and the next day, when Robert tried to investigate the issue, he told him a string of lies about how he never said this or did that, but the reports that Robert got the other people who were there to write all agree and conflict with his version of events.

This kind of behaviour is another indicator that Bolivia has a long way to go, because these people think that they have feudal rights and can behave any way they wish.  They are above the ordinary population who must kowtow to them and be grateful for the crumbs falling from their table.  Totally reprehensible.

SOME ANIMAL TALES

2005-12-02T18:09:00.000+01:00

SOME ANIMAL TALES

Here everyone comes bringing wild animals to see if we will buy them - monkeys, tortoises, the other day they even wanted to sell us a baby deer for US$50 .....  Apparently the Swedish missionaries who ran the dairy before used to buy animals and they sent them to Sweden or something, I don´t know.  Some missionaries!  Anyway, we have made a point of refusing to buy any animals pointing out to the people that the animals should be left where they were and that they are not a piece of merchandise.

One of our first experiences was on a Saturday morning when a man arrived on a bicycle with a bag tied to the crossbar.  We were going out for a walk with the dogs at the time and he stopped us saying that he had something that might interest us.  That was when we found out about the trading activities of the Swedes.  When he opened up the bag, out came a a baby ant-eater.  Beautiful.  Brown with a long pointed snout and paws with long curved nails.  It was sleepy and just lay curled up in your arms sleeping away.  Then it woke up and decided to have an explore.  It put its front paws on my shoulders and began to explore my face.  When it found my ears, out lashed its long thin rounded tongue right inside my ear - presumably hoping to find some ants in there!  Ticklish!  It tried a few times in one ear and then went around to the other one, but in vain, not much in the way of sustenance in there.  Giving up, it curled up again and went back to sleep.

It was raining, so we invited the fellow who had brought it into the house and offered him a cup of coffee (We are regarded as highly eccentric allowing peasants into our house!).  These chats are always interesting because you find out a lot about the people.  This young man had been abandoned by his parents when he was a baby, and he was brought up by one set of grandparents who made a great effort and sent him to school where he did well.  At the age of eleven he left his grandparents'  house to try and make his way in the world. He went to Cochabamba where he worked in a bus company, presumably carrying bags or some such task, and he lived on the street. He worked there for two years and the money he had earned he used to go to a radio mending course.  However, before he could complete the course his money ran out, so at the age of 14 he came to the Chapare where he has been working as a day labourer ever since (He must be about 24 now.).  He is now married with three children and he lives in his father-in-law´s house, but he had just managed to buy a small plot of land.  The problem with it is that, because he did not have much money, the only  land he could afford is on a slope and there is no area flat enough to build a cabin.

Another animal experience came after an owl crashed into the side window of Robert's car as he was driving home from Santa Cruz one night.  He stopped and picked the bird up and brought it back.  It had a cut on its shoulder which I cleaned with hydrogen peroxide and put some antibiotic powder on it and we put it in a box till morning.

When morning came we got the vet who works at the dairy to have a look at it.  It was clear that it had a broken wing, so we set up an operating table out on the grass and the vet set to work to see what could be done. He had never operated on a bird before, but I must say he was remarkably competent.  When he made the incision, we could see that two bones were broken just below the shoulder.  The worst part was that they were not just broken but slightly shattered so that the break was not clean and the two sections of bone would not fit back together again properly. In view of this we decided to try and insert a metal pin inside the bones.  The only stainless metal available was electrolytic wire from the maintenance department, so we used some fine gauge stuff which just fitted in nicely. After that we glued the parts together using that instant glue which they also use in human surgery, cleaned the whole area, sewed it up and that was it.  All this was done without anaesthetic because there was no adequate anaesthetic available.  Can you imagine the pain?  At one stage the poor animal fainted and I thought it was dead but its heart was still beating.  From time to time I gave it a syringe-full of water and sugar which it seemed to appreciate.

I kept giving it this mixture every half hour or so and by the afternoon it seemed to be coming round.  The vet suggested that I should go to the chemist and buy some drip solution but instead of intravenous I should get the oral type for children and give it that.  I did - but it was fatal.  I am sure it was too strong because shortly aferwards the poor animal died.

At first I was truly sorry, but when I thought about it I came to the conclusion that it was probably for the best.  Since the broken bones were so near to the shoulder, it would probably never be able to fly again and would have had to be kept in captivity. That would be fine as long as we were here because we could supply it with food of one type and another, but when we went away I am sure nobody would bother about the poor bird and it would end up dying of starvation.

Another incident occurred shortly afterwards.  One morning as I took the dogs on their early morning round, they seemed very interested in sniffing under a tree.  I saw what looked like a piece of fur (all wet because it was raining), so I didn´t allow them to go in.  That evening as we came back from a dip in the river, Simon jumped down into the drainage ditch and then I saw a little animal lying on its side down there.  It had mottled beige-coloured fur, a long narrow snout, little hands and a long bare tail which was black at the base and turned white about half way up.  It was totally still and I thought it was dead.  Then I saw a little black thing with a pink snout lying some distance away and others squirming to come out of it - babies.  So I thought it was having its babies.  I took the dogs back to the house and came back down to investigate.  I jumpled down into the ditch and with a stick prodded the baby lying some distance away to see if it was alive or not.  It was, so I pushed it up to the mother.  At that, her little snout twitched from side to side and then it was clear that she was not dead.  More babies were emerging.  From time to time the mother joined her front paws together just as if she were praying and then lay still again.  I had a closer look and could see that she had a wound on her back.

At that point the vet arrived and he told me that it was a Q'arachupa (in Quechua) or sarigüeña in Spanish.  This is a kind of possum, belonging to the same family as Australian possums. They are small marsupials like kangaroos, which explained that the babies were not being born at that moment.  They had been born some time ago and the mother carries them around in a little pouch where they feed until they are able to come out.  Then she carries them around on her tail which they cling to as she moves.  They are arboreal in habit and eat small birds, eggs and other things they find.  In the trees they are swift but on the ground they are slow, which probably explains why she got injured.  I strongly suspect the night watchman's dogs: he is not supposed to bring them to work but he does and they rampage around all over the place.  Further inspection showed that she had deep teeth mark wounds on either side of her neck and a wound on her back.  The babies were crawling out of the pouch because she was moribund and they could sense that.

Poor thing.  There was nothing to be done for her, so I got the vet to put her to sleep. I asked him whether the babies could survive on their own at that stage of development and he said they could not, so I told him to put them down too.  However, the following morning as I went out with the dogs I could hear the blowing sound which the babies make, and when I went to investigate I discovered that he had not done as I asked.  In a fury of righteous indignation fit to behold I grabbed hold of him as he came to work and gave him a lecture on the implications of the professional responsibility of vets which applies even when the task to be performed is not a pleasant one.  He won't forget that tirade in a hurry and now looks at me sheepishly every time I see him.

Then some people brought along a tortoise - quite large, about a foot across, although that is nothing in comparison to the huge tortoises that used to be found in this area.  They have virtually been hunted to extinction. I was not here when they came and the dairy workers wanted to kill it and make a soup.  Fortunately René, the manager, put a stop to that and took the animal back to his house to prevent it being sacrificed.

The last in this series of animal encounters occurred the other day down by the river.  It had just rained a lot and the river was in spate.  Lying by the water´s edge was an armadillo.  It´s body is about the length of an adult´s arm from the wrist to the elbow and its tail is of similar length.  Its head is small, about the size of the palm of a lady´s hand.  The body is beigey in colour and all along it are rings of scaley armour which protect it from attack. Armadillos are called tatús in the language of the Amazon tribes and this word has also been taken into Quechua.

23 Jan. 1995

This morning one of the drivers saw that a boa had been run over by a vehicle and he picked it up from the road.  It is 12 feet long with a body about 8 inches in diameter tapering towards the tail.  The head is small with two rather prominent eyes and the mouth with tiny teeth looks rather small but the head is virtually all mouth and when it wants to swallow something the mouth can articulate  to open wider and allow it swallow its prey.  Apparently the saliva "corrodes" the victim.  But in any case the boa would have broken your ribs by the time it wound itself around  your body.  This was a fairly small specimen: they can be up to 15m. long.  The skin is beautiful: yellowish with black circles.  They skinned it with a knife and razor blade and put the skin up to dry.  Then the snake was gutted just like a fish and they will eat it tonight. They say that it tastes just like surubí, one of the large river fishes here, and better than pacú, another of the fishes.  It is regarded as a great delicacy.  I could only think what a pity it was that such a beautiful creature had to be destroyed by a truck.

ROXANA

2005-12-01T14:48:00.000+01:00

ROXANA

31.05.1994

I had been saying for months that Roxana was pregnant but nobody agreed. Roxana started off as the office cleaner, but she soon showed an aptitude for operating the radio so first she combined both functions and now is the full-time radio operator.  However, on Monday May 23 she asked to speak to Robert and told him that she was indeed pregnant - and was due to give birth in the first week of June.  She asked if he would hold her job for her for one month if she sent someone in to do the work for her.  He agreed.  She also asked to speak to me and I went to see her in the afternoon.

Roxana is from Riberalta in El Beni, the northern plains of the Amazon bordering with Brazil.  Her parents got divorced some years ago and about a year ago she left her home and came to Ivirgarzama where her father was living with his new partner who is from Pando.  When she arrived, her younger sister, who is now 15 and already living with her father, told her that things were awful in the house and that her step-mother made her do all the heavy work and the washing.  The younger sister decided to leave and return to her mother.  She is now back at school.

Roxana did not stay long either.  She soon left and went to Chimoré where she has an uncle.  This uncle who works on one of the river boats plying the route to El Beni and back, is married to "una de pollera" i.e. an Andean indigenous woman and lives in his mother-in-law's house.  "They always told me that "las de pollera" were "malvadas" (bad) but I never believed it. Now I know it is true."  This little remark reveals the ever present conflict between the "collas" or people from the altiplano and the valley of Cochabamba and the "cambas" or people from the tropical region of Bolivia.

Roxana offered to look after her two little nieces, but the treatment meted by the mother-in-law was such (she said she had no need to feed someone else's mouth and was even mean with the food given to her own family) that she decided she would not stay.  When her uncle came back from one of his trips, she told him what she had decided and he did not object, although he knew that she had no place to go.

She had a boyfrined, called David, who worked for the electricity company ELFEC, and he offered to let her stay in his room.  So, she took the bed which her father had given her and moved in there.  Nothing happened for some time but eventually it did and the baby is the result.

The boyfriend, who is now out of work, has agreed to recognize paternity and give the child his name, but he says he is now going away to find work, and basically doesn't want to know any more about it.  Roxana does not want to beg him to stay or any such thing so she was in a quandary about what to do.  David's mother had offered to look after the baby after the first month, but I pointed out to Roxana that this lady lived a good hour's journey away, which meant that she would never see the child except at week-ends maybe, and if the relationship with David finally came to a close, there could be a problem over jurisdiction of the child if she left it to his mother.  Another point is that what she would really be doing would be handing over a slave for life, because that is what the child would become once it grew up, being obliged to work and do everything in return for its keep.

She rents a little room for 45Bs. (US$6)a month, so what she has now decided to do is take a girl to look after the baby while she is at work. That will cost her 100Bs. a month.  Since her room is close to the office she will be able to see the baby at lunch-time as well as in the morning and at night.

Robert gave her a month's salary in advance (600Bs.) so that she would have enough to pay the clinic in Cochabamba.  She did not want to have the baby in the local clinic at Ibuelo because of every 10 children born there 8 die.  However, the baby came a few days earlier than expected and the clinic she went to charged 900Bs. so we have had to send her more money to be able to pay.  We had found out about a clinic run by nuns who charge 200Bs. for the birth and 13Bs. per day for board.  This would have been better but the harm is done now and she will be short of money.

A little baby girl , named Dayana, was born on Friday May 27.

PAY DAY AT THE DAIRY

2005-11-29T09:09:00.000+01:00

PAY DAY AT THE DAIRY

31.05.1994

Every month the dairy pays the milk producers for their production during the previous month. On one occasion I was asked to help out with the payments because they were short of staff and sometimes I go just out of interest, because it reveals a lot about the people.

Since the milk is collected from quite far-flung places, the people hire a "trufi" (mini-bus) or a truck and around 8.30a.m. on payment day they start to arrive at the dairy.  The earliest comers take their place in the queue while the later arrivals tend to sit around under a tree until the queue diminishes, but even those in the queue tend to squat on the ground rather than stand.  They make quite a colourful crowd, particularly the women with their bright skirts and straw hats.  There are always loads of children running around, and when I take Simon and Paddy out for a walk they are a great attraction.

Since it seemed to me that a large proportion of the people coming for payment were women and many of them could not sign their name, I decided to do a little sociological survey to see whether my observations were accurate or not.  These are the results.

Out of a total of 153 people who came for payment 87 or 56.8% were women and 43.2% were men.  However, only 18.9% of the women had the cows registered in their own name.  This would seem to indicate, though, that it is the women who hold the purse-strings just the same.

Of 73 women who came on one particular day their social status divided up as follows:

a.     Married                              52     71.2%
b.     Single without children                    14     19.2%
c.     Unmarried with children                3      4.1%
d.     Steady relationship/no children                1      1.4%
e.     Steady relationship/with children           2      2.7%
f.     Widow                               1      1.4%

Categories c & e are really the same.  It just means that the women's perception of their status is different. Basically they are people who have not been able to afford a wedding.

Literacy figures for this group came out as follows:

Literate               50          68.5%
Illiterate          23          31.5%

Literate in this context means that they were able to sign their names and when asked said they could read and write.  However,  I doubt very much whether the majority would pass the UNESCO's test for functional literacy but am in no position to test this out.

The literacy breakdown by age was as follows:

Illiterate          10-20              0%
20-30            6.25%
30-40           30.43%
40-50           60%
50-60          100%
60-70          100%

Comparing the illiteracy rates with the quality of the milk produced, I found that there was no relationship between these two factors.  The milk is graded as class A, B & C.

A          B          C
Literate               57.5%          35%          7.5%
Illiterate          70%          25%          5%

However, there was a direct correlation between the personal hygiene of the people concerned and the quality of their milk.

Interest in improving the quality of their milk was not affected by literacy levels either.  This is more an economic factor, because they get paid more for better quality milk.

Of the men, only 1.5% were totally illiterate and 4.5% could sign but with such difficulty it was clear that this was all they knew how to do.  Of the remaining 94% only further investigations would reveal how many were really functionally literate.

Conspicuous among the throng of campesinos is a small group of tall, white people.  These are Russian orthodox Jews who have a colony about 70Kms. away and sell their milk to the dairy.  The men wear collarless Russian shirts tied at the waist while the women all wear long ankle-length dresses or pinafores with a long-sleeved blouse underneath.  They all have their heads completely covered using scarves but they do not shave their heads.  Their cattle is the best maintained of all the people who sell milk to the dairy.

LORINI

2005-11-28T16:20:00.000+01:00

LORINI

30.05.1994

The other day a man came from La Paz to look at some machinery in one of the plants.  His surname was Lorini and he turned out to be a fairly interesting character. His great-grandfather had come to South America with Garibaldi in the nineteenth century.  I did not know that Garibaldi took part in the Wars of Independence in South America.  Apparently after he had united all of northern Italy, King Vittorio Emmanuele did not want him to continue south and he was issued with an ultimatum to the effect that either he got out of the way or he would be eliminated.  So, off he went to South America where he met his wife who was Argentinian.

Well, the great-grandfather of this man was a chemist and eventually made his way to La Paz where he set up a pharmacy in the main square just opposite the government building.  One day a military officer who was coming out of the government building fell down the steps and hurt himself and great-grandfather Lorini was called upon to help him.  He did his best.  While he was attending to the officer he noticed that he had a wound on his ribcage which was bound with a kind of leaf poultice and the wound was healing and looked very good.  He was curious about this and later called upon the officer at his home or barracks or wherever, ostensibly to find out how he was faring, but also to find out a bit more about these leaves.  They turned out to be coca leaves and he decided to do some chemical research himself to discover what properties the leaves had.

After some time he developed a kind of medicinal syrup which he sold in his chemist shop.  An American company later came and offered to buy the patent of this syrup from him and he sold it.  This company then sold the patent on to - yes, you guessed it! - the Coca Cola company and the syrup was the basis of the modern drink.

Another aspect of this story is that Mr. Lorini had a chemist friend in Germany, and in their correspondence he mentioned this miraculous leaf to him.  His German friend asked him to send some leaves so he could do some experiments, and he obliged.  This German chemist was the first person to make cocaine hydrochloride which is the basis of cocaine.

So, you see, it's a small world.  A friend of the family in La Paz has all the documentation regarding this.

THE FENCE

2005-11-27T14:23:00.001+01:00

THE FENCE

25.05.1994

Although the dairy plant is set in 82,000 square metres of land, there was no place to let the dogs run free, so we decided to have a fence built just around one side of the house so that we could let them wander around.  At first we got quotations from various  joiners but (seeing that we are "gringos") they wanted to make us a fence using "almendrillo" which is a precious Amazon hardwood and extremely expensive. This was acceptable neither from the ecological point of view nor from the economic one.  It was then suggested that we should have a fence made by one of the tribal people, a Yura, who are the traditional enemies of the Yukis that I went to visit.  This sounded like a good idea so, one of the workers at the dairy whose "wife is half-Yura" (according to him) - in fact, they are both full-blooded Yuras, but he does not want to admit this in case people think he is "less" than they are - brought along his brother-in-law to give a quotation.  He did and it was one third what everyone else wanted, so we told him to go ahead.  That was just before the nationwide barricade.

He started cutting the wood.  This is done on the banks of the river where he cut straight branches and saplings, stripped off the bark and cut them to size.  He then brought them up by canoe to his house near the village.  On account of the barricade he could go no further than that, and once the barricade was over his mother-in-law died so proceedings stopped for a few days.  She had had pains for a long time, he said, so she was better off.

When he started work he brought along two little boys, one aged 5 and the other 10.  These are his youngest children.  He has had 7 and his wife is expecting another one any day now which makes 8.  The third child, a daughter, died of chickenpox when she was 10 months old.  His eldest son is 21 years old.  He himself does not look much older than that, because here men have very little beard (a genetic feature attesting to their Mongol origin when the American continent was part of a larger landmass)  and very fresh faces.  In fact, he is 36 years old, so he had his first child at the age of 15.

He measured away and with extreme precision situated the master posts.  He and his eldest son, who came on subsequent days, dug the holes which they filled in neatly once the posts were in place.  Then he prepared the horizontal pieces and, once they were in place, the uprights were attached.  Traditionally they would have been attached using a cord made from tree bark but he opted to use a more modern (and less effective) method, so we subsequently used wire to hold them in place once the initial shrinkage had taken place.  In any event, he is the most meticulous and perfectionist worker we have come across in Bolivia.  Robert went out to congratulate him, because he had reached the conclusion that such workers did not exist in the country.  He was very pleased at that.

We had given him a one third advance to get the work going and when the job was about half-way through he asked if he could have 100Bs. to buy groceries for the family.  The remainder he got when the work was completed.

Since the children came with him every day, I asked if they did not go to school.  He replied that he had wanted to send them, because he himself did not go to school, but so far he has not had the money to do so.  On the last day, I asked him how much it cost to register the children in school.  THE EQUIVALENT OF TWO US DOLLARS! - about a pound, so I gave him  the equivalent of five pounds extra on the condition that he was to use it to register the children in school and buy their books etc with it.  He went off very happy, so I only hope he has in fact done that.

It was interesting to speak to him, because, when I congratulated him on his excellent care and workmanship, his reply was that he had worked for three years with the Brazilian road-building company that builds the disasters in the country.  When I insisted that he may have learned about measuring and so forth  there but that his knowledge and skill for working in wood must be part of his heritage, he reluctantly admitted that this might be so.  Of course, he still had not admitted that he was a Yura.  He agreed that he had been brought up "in the country" - not the jungle, mind you, the "country".  When I said that I had made a trip down the river and thought that the area was magnificent, he was pleased at that and said "Thank you, Ma'am, thank you".  Then I asked him if he knew how to make canoes and he proudly asserted that he was also a "navegante" or navigator and was skilled in making canoes.  Then he warmed to his subject and explained how they made the canoes water-tight by applying a mixture of pitch.  This was as a result of my saying that I did not want to paint the fence because I wanted to see the natural colour of the wood and therefore would prefer to protect it with diesel. Up-market people here paint their fences, you see.  Still he did not admit that he was a Yura.  The nearest we got was that his wife was part Yura, so it would seem to be all right for wives to be "part" tribal.  Interesting how these reactions occur as a safety mechanism to protect people who are different.

A real giveaway of their origins, however, is that fact that they did not take part in the barricade and consequently were fined by the town committee.  Logically, they would not take part, because their jungle culture has no ties with the cultivation of coca leaf and they feel no attachment to it, with the result that they do not get involved in the protection of it.  They are not agriculturalists, since their jungle culture is based on hunting and gathering, so when they come up to the "village" they do all kinds of odd jobs as and when they come up, specializing in river navigation and woodworking when they get the chance.

Attitudes to work can be strange.  Filippo and Monica have got a maid in Chimoré.  Her name is María and she is a typical little indigenous girl with her "pollera" (wide skirt), bodice blouse and two long plaits down her back.  She comes in and does nothing until she is told what to do.  When she finishes one job, she will wait until she is given another, but does nothing on her own initiative.  In the middle of a job she might just sit down and look out the window or go out and have a look around and then come back later.  When Filippo and Monica went to Santa Cruz to the Agricultural Fair she did not come back, and when inquiries were made she said that there was nothing to do in that house because it was too clean.  Dusting and tidying and removing cobwebs and organizing bookshelves are peripheral minutiae and what does it matter anyway?  Cleaning means sturdy washing and such things.  This is one of the reasons why I do not have anybody to help me, because I would rather just get on and do it myself rather than have to follow up what someone else is doing.

THE FENCE

2005-11-27T14:23:00.000+01:00

THE SANTA CRUZ DOG S

2005-11-25T09:11:00.000+01:00

THE SANTA CRUZ DOG SHOW

11.05.94

The weekend after the blockade ended we went to Santa Cruz.  This was my first trip to the "city" since I came to the Chapare in February.  The reason why we went at all was that there was to be a dog show there and Simon was registered to take part, so off we went.  We stayed at the Hotel Asturias which Robert had found when he went on business.  It was founded by a man from Asturias and now belongs to his three daughters.  We got permission to have the dogs in the room and there is a nice garden all around the hotel with a swimming-pool too.  Filippo and Monica also came because Robert was going direct to La Paz by plane on Sunday evening and I didn't think it was a good idea to make the long journey back by myself.

On Saturday afternoon we went to a huge street market where you can buy virtually anything under the sun.  It all comes in as contraband from Brazil, so the prices are not too bad.  The dogs were exhausted after traipsing around there in the heat all afternoon.  So were we.

The feeling you get is that Santa Cruz belongs to a different country.  You feel you are not in Bolivia at all.  It looks towards Brazil and is quite different.  The majority of the population are immigrants, from Brazil, Argentina, Korea, Japan, China, Germany, Yugoslavia - you name it, they're here - even Indians and Pakistanis, as well as migrants from other parts of Bolivia.  This makes for a very dynamic society and all the commercial activity of Bolivia is centred here.  That is why Robert has now reoriented the project to look towards Santa Cruz rather than Cochabamba.  It is also cheaper

After that I went to get my hair cut because it was over three months since I had had it cut and it was all long and straggly.  Monica had found a place called "Pippo's - Peinador de Reinas", so we went along there.  Of course, it wasn't royalty whose hair he cut and combed but beauty queens and carnival queens.  What an amazing place!  Great carved wood rococo mirrors at each place, photographs of carnival and beauty queens all over the walls and Pippo himself combing away!  They asked me if I wanted Pippo to cut my hair himself.  When I asked how long I would have to wait for that, I was told that he had two brides to do and three fifteen year-old birthday girls as well.  Here when (middle-class) kids reach the age of 15 they have a big party.  I suppose it is reminiscent of the rights of passage at puberty. I decided that too long a wait was out of the question so I said anyone could cut it but they had to know what they were about, and we sat down to wait.

The amazing thing about the women in Santa Cruz is that they are all coquette in the extreme. Watching them preening is an education.  Every move the hairdresser made when she was applying the dye to one woman's head was carefully scrutinized in a hand-held mirror.  Then when the dye was on and she had to wait for a while she went around all the hairdressers asking them what they thought about it.  While their hair is getting cut, combed or whatever, they all have their nails done too.  A lot of back-combing was going on, and when each layer had been back-combed a great waft of Aquanet lacquer was applied liberally before the next layer was done.  Then the whole affair is combed into place and more Aquanet tops it off.  I think it mustn't move in about a month after all that.

I kept thinking about the hairdresser that went to Eileen's and cut all our hair in her kitchen.  I was wishing I could conjure him up out of a hat!

Then a manicurist asked me if my hair was clean or did I want it washed, I replied that it was clean but that I wanted it washed all the same. While she was washing it she asked if I wanted it "armado".  A bit of quick thinking was required here.  I want it cut and blown dry - just simple, great stress on the simple.  Total disinterest after that.  I realized that "armar" was what they said when they meant having it set on rollers rather than blown dry.  The prospect of a backcombed "armature" was just too much.  Luckily in the end a girl called Sara cut my hair and she did a pretty good job of it.  After that we went for a pizza.

We also went to a new Chilean owned supermarket called HIPERMAXI.  It isn't anywhere near the size of the Spanish hypermarkets but after being in the Chapare for so long where the choice of everything is extremely limited it was like landing on the moon.  There were all kinds of things that I had almost forgotten existed at all - like marmalade and whole meal bread and other such things.  We had a wander around there and did a fair bit of shopping.  There was hardly room to move in the car by the time we had finished.

On Sunday afternoon it was the dog show.  There was supposed to be a monographic German Shepherd class at midday and then at 2p.m. the other classes would begin.  However, at 12 o´clock everyone upped and left.  At 2p.m. the judges and organizers began to reappear but, since nobody had done any of the organizing in the meantime, everything had to start from scratch with the result that the German Shepherd class began about an hour and a half after the programmed 2p.m. start.  The judge was a lady called Mrs. Blum from Brazil.  There are lots of people of German extraction in Brazil.  She certainly seemed to know her stuff.  However, after a few dogs had paraded to and fro, she began to shake her head, grabbed the steward and took him to the judging desk.  They had mixed up the various classes so she had to start all over again.  This happened twice.  I thought the poor woman was going to kill one of them.  However, this is Bolivia and nobody knows how to do anything right.  That's just the crux of the matter.

Then came the Old English Sheepdogs.  Poor things, particularly one which had been on its grooming table for hours being backcombed and lacquered (shades of Pippo here) and chalked and God knows what.  Even as it was waiting to go into the ring the stupid guy was teasing out its moustache and fluffing its head and the poor animal stood in patient resignation.  I wouldn't have blamed it if it had bitten his hand off.  I think he used to dog to show himself off!

Then it was our turn.  In we went.  Great rounds of applause.  Simon trotted around looking bemused.  Then the judge examined first his eyes and then his teeth (not so amusing) and then checked to see whether he had "two fully descended testicles" as it says in the rules.  This was the final indignity.  He looked at her in shocked amazement and then looked at me.  Another circuit.  This time he caught sight of Paddy and Robert, Filippo and Monica and  did the full circuit with his head twisted around looking at them and wagging his tail.  More applause.

By this time it was after 4p.m.  Robert had to catch a plane and I had to get going to get past the unsurfaced part of the road before night fell, so we could not wait till the end.  A shame really, because I think he would have won a prize.  This suspicion was confirmed some months later when I took the dogs to the vet´s to have their vaccinations.  He lamented the fact that Simon could not wait because the judge was very impressed with him!

I got a bit of faryngitis so I had to go along to the health post.  I must say that they attended to me very well - took my temperature, blood pressure, sounded me, peered down my throat, asked me innumerable questions and finally packed me off with a prescription for a cough mixture and some antibiotics after paying the equivalent of 50p. For us that is cheap, but for many people it is quite a lot of money.  At the chemist, the man tots up the cost of the prescription and asks you if you are prepared or can afford to pay that amount before he doles it out to you - 2 pounds 50, so a fortune for most people.  How you can get faryngitis with a temperature of 30ºC beats me, but there you are.  I suppose it is because at night it gets cool because we are in winter, of course. Yesterday was northern hemisphere’s longest day of the year and our shortest.  From now on days north of the equator will start to get shorter and ours will get a little longer.

A QUECHUA WEDDING

2005-11-24T14:55:00.000+01:00

A QUECHUA WEDDING

17.05.1994

Last weekend (May 14-15) we were invited to an indigenous wedding.  In fact the wedding was supposed to have taken place on May 4th. but, because of the nationwide blockade, it had to be cancelled because neither the guests  nor the food and drink could be brought in.

The bride and groom were 36 and 38 years old respectively, have been together for 18 years and have 7 children.  However, until now they could not afford to get married, because the bride and groom must pay for their own wedding which should be the most memorable day in all their life.  Now their oldest daughter, who is 16 years old, has a baby and they want her to be married but they have to get married first, hence the great effort.

The reason why we were invited at all is that the agronomist who runs the project dairy, has known these people for years and he offered to help them out with the wedding.  He was therefore a "padrino" (the nearest equivalent is a best man - but not quite) and, since he knew that I was interested in all these sociological things, we were invited as his friends.

The church marriage ceremony took place at 8a.m. followed by the  civil ceremony at 9a.m.  Between these two events the couple are driven around the village being greeted and showered with confetti by all the people.

Unfortunately, we missed all that part, because at 7a.m. a message came through that one of the drivers had had an accident and he had to go and investigate.  It turned out that Oswaldo was blinded by a lorry's lights as he was driving to the dairy after dark.  He veered off the road into a ditch and his head was split open by the window and he got a cut on his lip.  He must have been unconscious because he did not manage to call on the radio, with the result that the following morning he was discovered by some project personnel who were on their way to Santa Cruz to the Agricultural Fair.  He had to be taken to the hospital and so on, so that took up a lot of time.

By the time we got there the light repast was over and the bride and groom had performed the tradition dance.  However, when we arrived we were served a glass of champagne (bubbly cider really) with coconut in it  and sweet biscuits and then the soup with potatoes and tripe.  The wedding was held in a large, rectangular canvas marquee erected on their land for the occasion.  Wooden benches made of  sawn tree trunks placed on other pieces of wood were placed all the way around the marquee.  At one end there was a table covered with bouquets of flowers and other flowers placed on metal stands: this looked just like an altar and is where the wedding mass was said.  Behind this, on the canvas wall, two traditional woven cloths (awayus) were pinned up and decorated with congratulations.  At the other end was the kitchen and the place for the band.  There were two bands: one was a traditional band playing altiplano instruments like the various forms of panpipes, quena,  drums etc. and the other one sang traditional dance songs but using an organ, guitar and other mdoern instruments with great amplification!

The bride wore a traditional "pollera" (the voluminous pleated skirt) in lovely pastel colours, the traditional white lace blouse and a western-style headdress and veil.  The groom wore a grey suit, white shirt and tie and the poor fellow looked as if he was about to expire any minute with the heat and constriction. This was compounded by the overwhelming responsibility of seeing that everyone was being duly attended to.

There are SEVEN best men.  The first and most important one is in charge of the religious ceremony and the reception on the first day.  The second is in charge of the civil ceremony (in this case René) and the reception on the second day (Weddings last either two or three days here).  Then there is the "padrino de aras" who is in charge of the wedding rings, the "padrino de torta" in charge of the wedding cake, the "padrino de altar y mosaico" in charge of the altar decoration and having the photographs mounted and framed to form a mosaic, the "padrino de colitas y partes" in charge of the invitations and arranging for commemorative pins  and lastly the "padrino de champán y cerveza", literally the champagne and beer best man but in practice he is in charge of all beverages. The padrinos are accompanied in their duties by their respective wives.

The bride and groom sit behind the table/altar and the padrinos and madrinas sit on the same "top bench" in hierarchical order, except when they are performing some duty.

The drinks person is kept busy all the time.  Apart from beer, the drink which is served in abundance is chicha, the drink made from fermented corn cobs.  This has to be brought from Cochabamba because in this area the temperature is too high and it ferments too quickly which means that the drink tastes bad.  I have now found out what happens after the corn is boiled and then the liquid is removed from the big cauldron I could see by the roadside outside Cochabamba.  The liquid is then put into barrels and left to ferment for eight days.  After that it is ready to drink, but it must ferment for 8 days and at the lower temperature of the altiplano.  The chicha is brought by lorry from Cochabamba and then stored in barrels.  At frequent intervals the drinks people would bring out rectangular containers with a handle, for all the world like cooking oil cans, full of chicha, which was then served in gourd or coconut "cups" called tutumas.  At first we were given ours in a glass, but we soon discovered that it tastes better from the gourd so after that we had ours in a gourd too.  The chicha is pale yellow in colour and tastes a bit like natural cider without the fizz but more vegetably.  Like cider, it is also a highly efficient diuretic!  It soon became necessary to unload some of this liquid, but, of course, there are no loos, so it was out to the nearest coca plantation to water the harvest.

All the guests, dressed in their best, sat on the benches around the marquee, everyone very serious and solemn.  The band then announced that it was time for the bride and groom and the first best man and his wife to dance.  They danced a cueca, which is one of the traditional altiplano dances performed with a handkerchief which is waved about.  Then another dance to be performed by more padrinos and so on.  The people are very solemn and take their dancing seriously - no smiling or laughing.  The interesting thing about these social functions is that the present population of this area is of altiplano origin: they are settlers who have migrated to this area.  This means that the cultural stamp is an imported one, hence the chicha and all the dances from their places of origin.

At a certain point it is time to give the gifts.  On this occasion, padrino number 4 (in charge of the cake) asked René (No. 2) if the village lawyer could kick off the gift-giving.  René had no objection, so Mr. Lawyer approached the bride and groom and with great fanfare the band-leader announced that his gift was US$150.  After that a queue was formed and people deposited their gifts on the table/altar in front of the bride and groom.  After they had done that they embraced and the guest took a handful of confetti and rubbed it on the bride and groom's head and they did the same in return.  This was repeated with the "padrinos".  Then before they left the gift-giving ceremony a gourd of chicha was offered to each person.  As well as, or sometimes instead of a gift, each person pinned a banknote on the suit of the groom or on the bride's bodice.  The protocol is that if the guest is a relative or friend of the bride then he/she pins the money on the bride and vice versa.  In our case, after we had deposited our gift of cooking cauldrons, we put a note on each of them because we had been invited by both.

After that the cake is cut and dancing begins when the guests can participate.  As the dancing goes on and people drink more chicha they pin more and more money on the couple's clothes.  The padrinos must keep a close watch to see who is accumulating more notes and it is the obligation of the chief padrinos to see that the score is evened up.  At the end of the night the gifts and money are taken and counted by the padrino concerned who, on the following day, must make up the difference so that neither side is the loser.

We were expecting an important phone call so we had to leave early which was a great pity, the more so because when we got back home after the hour's drive the telephone lines were dead and so we could not take the call anyway.  The next day there was another disaster, so we missed the follow-up.  However, the second day's celebrations begin in the afternoon with the arrival of the civil ceremony "padrino".  The bride and groom process into the marquee once again and, still dressed in their wedding finery, take their places behind the table/altar, flanked by the "padrinos" except that on this occasion the place of honour is taken by the civil "padrino" rather than the religious one.  The gift-equalling ceremony takes place and then merrymaking begins once again until well after dark.

DAY TO DAY

2005-11-23T18:34:00.000+01:00

DAY TO DAY

11.05.1994

Days begin early here.  The sun is up and it is light by 6.15 a.m.  (except on cloudy days) - and Simon is standing by the bed at first light hitting me with his paw just in case I had not noticed that it was day already. In summer (December - March) night falls around 7 p.m.  In winter it gets dark around 6.30 p.m.  Both morning and evening bring flocks of green parrots which fly over the house squawking raucously.  Watching their gregarious activity drives home how cruel it must be for them to be confined to a cage all alone.  They love to wheel about and circle in groups calling all the while to one another.  Oropéndolas flute and trill in the trees, and, each time they do, it looks as though they are about to topple off their perch.  Yellow-bellied and paltry tyrannulets dee-dee-dee and cheeyip-cheeyip-cheeyip respectively, scolding their fellows as they go.  Simon gets a crick in his neck watching them all.  His other morning duty is to be on the look-out for bicycles.  As soon as he sees one, he leaps up and runs to the fence barking like a mad thing.

The temperature then rises steadily throughout the day to reach 30 odd or 26 degrees depending on the seasons.  May 10 was the first day that we did not sweat since we arrived here because the temperature only reached 20ºC and the day was overcast.  That was the onset of winter.  Now we are beginning to sweat again as spring settles in. Until now we have just been sweating all over all day since the humidity is high.  I often think of what one of my teachers at primary school said to us in class once: horses sweat, gentlemen perspire and ladies glow.  Not much glowing going on around here, just pure honest-to-goodness sweat!

Activity begins equally early.  People are out and about their business by 7 a.m. and activity continues steadily throughout the day.  No business hours prevail: people just sit and sell their produce until it is gone either in the village or by the roadside.  Cooking also goes on outside and people make great cauldrons of food which they eat themselves and sell to others.

Housework is a bit of a pain.  There are no washing-machines, so I have devised a method whereby I have bought a big tub which I put the clothes in to steep.  After a while I get in and tread on them for  a while to beat them up a bit and then I rinse them.  There are no vacuum cleaners, of course, so it's the old sweeping brush.  Until a couple of weeks ago there was no floor mop either.  They are not to be found in any Latin American country except Mexico (we have had scouts in Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil) but even in Mexico there are no buckets to squeeze them out.  The method of washing floors is either (if you have a surfaced floor - most floors in the Chapare are dirt floors - but no furniture) swilling water on the floor and then pushing it out the door with a rubber thing on the end of a pole similar to what you would clean windows with except that for floors the handle is longer, or, if you do have a tiled floor and furniture (and most people here do not), then a floorcloth is wrung out and pushed around the floor with the rubber device mentioned above.  From my point of view, a very unsatisfactory method of cleaning floors, because you have to plosh in water all the time.

However, a few weeks ago when Robert was in Santa Cruz, he came across a shop which sold mops and mop-pails (albeit rather small for the mops) which were brought in by a Spanish lady, so he bought a supply of mops for us and for Monica and Filippo, the Italian agronomist and his Texan born - of Polish and Swiss parents - girl-friend).  I have since seen that the Chilean supermarket also has mops, but they don't have the pails.  I think I am going to start a business importing mops and pails!

When night falls, candles are lit and things go on as usual.  Outside the settlements, people sit by the roadside and chat.  I cannot fathom this fascination with the road: people sit by it and even lie with their torso and head on it. It is my ever-present horror that some time one will not get up and we will not see him and drive straight over him in the dark.  However, they usually do get up in time and I have never heard of such an accident taking place! I subsequently learned that the reason why people sit by the roadside is that the petrol fumes make for a mosquito-free environment!

In Ivirgarzama, the village closest to the dairy and where I go to shop, apart from a nun with a grey habit, I am the only "white person" to frequent the town.  This means that there is no opportunity to pass unnoticed.  With this white skin and fair hair I stick out like a sore thumb.  Being white and fair means that the nearest identification the people can make is that I am a "gringa" - not a good identification at all, given the appallingness of U.S. policy in Latin America.  However, it is a disturbing yet salutary experience to be the victim of discrimination.  Normally we equate discrimination with the poor and the black, and here I am white and very well off in comparison to most of the other people around me.  Here, however, both attributes work against me.  If I am a "gringa", then I represent the powers of physical repression which come in and try to put a violent end to their way of life.  And if I am rich, then I also represent the powers of economic repression which take from the people and give nothing in return, imposing neo-liberal economic remedies which are totally inappropriate for these countries (Are they appropriate for any country?) bringing nothing but increased misery for the poor. Since the dogs always go with me in the car, I am known as the "lady with the dogs".

At first when we were driving about trying to get to places and we stopped to ask the way, I found it strange that people never seemed to know where it was that we wanted to go.  I couldn't believe that they wouldn't know the villages in their own areas.  Later I came to realize that seeing "gringos" in the vehicle they simply refuse to provide any information, such is the degree of mistrust of their powerful neighbour to the north.

Perhaps the most ubiquitous feature is the bugs.  There are millions of them both big and small.  Not so many flies, but butterflies and moths of incomparable beauty, praying mantises, enormous grasshoppers which, I suppose, must come into the biblical category of the "locusts" of plague fame, beetles, bees and wasps and a host of other things which I cannot identify as yet.  However, perhaps the greatest variety is found in ants.  There are ants of every size and specialization.  At night a veritable army of one kind ascends one particular type of tree outside the house, each ant chomps its way through a leaf and carries its booty off to the anthill.  They have made a real highway across the grass.  Another large, elongated ant called a "tucandera" can inject a venom so strong that if it bites you you can have a fever for about 24 hours.  Then there is a diminutive ant which crawls around in the grass during the day.  If an unsuspecting foot gets in their path they swarm all over it injecting minute quantities of venom which within 15 seconds makes the injected spot start to itch.  But in the realm of itches, so far there is none to beat the itch resulting from the  bite of a tiny red spider.  It gets on people's legs and up their trousers biting all the way.  The itch is unbearable but it is fatal to scratch.  Then you are really done for, because you can't stop and you can scratch the skin down to the very flesh.  A bit too late I learned that the remedy is to apply alcohol liberally the minute you feel that you have been bitten, so we now keep bottles of alcohol in strategic places for use in emergencies.  With the onset of winter the many bugs diminished for a while, (That gave my legs some time to recover!) but they are on the increase again.

BLOQUEO

2005-09-25T20:14:00.000+02:00

BLOQUEO

09.05.1994

It is almost five months to the day since we arrived in Bolivia and I regret very much that I have reached the conclusion that not only is Bolivia going nowhere fast, it is going nowhere - PERIOD.  If I had any doubts on this score they were dispelled completely by the events of the past two weeks.  (end of April-beginning of May)

For more than a month the schools all over the country have been closed and teachers (particularly primary teachers)  have been on strike with thousands of them on hunger strike in an attempt to press upon the government the need to improve salaries and conditions of service so that they will be able to eat - literally.  At the moment families of the children attending school have to pay the equivalent of US$1 to try and make up the teachers' salaries because, if not, they would simply starve.  The government wants to reform education in the country (and rightly so, because it is a total disaster) but they have proceeded to do so without consulting with the teachers.  The health workers are in a similar situation.  The trade unions stress that the 7% salary rise which the government was proposing is insufficient and does nothing to take workers out of the misery trap that they are in.  Then there are soon to be trade union elections.  The campesinos maintain that the only source of income they have is coca leaf, and unless and until the alternative development projects being promoted in the area can provide a real alternative they simply cannot afford to stop growing coca.  In this they are 100% correct.  The alternative development projects over the past 20 years have been an utter failure and there is no questioning that fact.  It is simply and patently true.

In view of all this unrest and upheaval, on Thursday April 28th. a nationwide campaign to block all roads came into force.  The campesinos responded to the call and by midnight April 27-28 all the roads and pathways in the country were blocked by human barricades later reinforced by tree-trunks and any other material to hand.  By morning all traffic was stopped - buses, trucks and everything with thousands of passengers caught in the way. The entrance to the dairy was the point chosen to set up the block at this end of the village so we were completely closed in with the blockade on one side and the river on the other.  Two thousand people were at this barricade.  Between Entre Ríos (the scene of the helicopter attacks last time around) and Bulo Bulo there were nine thousand people over a distance of 25Kms.

As is frequently (nearly always) the case, alternative development projects become the focus of people's frustration and there is a danger of assault.  The UMOPAR (the army anti-drug patrol) came by to protect the premises, but we told them (in the nicest possible way, of course) that we would rather protect ourselves, thank you very much.  If there is any protection you don't want and that is the UMOPAR. In fact their presence anywhere is a sure-fire recipe for reprisals.  The best protection you can have under these circumstances is to have good relations with the campesino leaders which, fortunately, the project has been fostering and developing.  In any case, the first night we thought it wiser to put out all lights on the complex so as not to attract attention to ourselves.  The following day some campesino leaders came and asked if they could have the lights  of the central passage on at night because they have to check the change-over at the barricades and they needed light(!), so the next night we put those lights on again.

A group of World Health Organization experts were caught in Chimoré (where Robert’s office is)  with the potential head of a new project.  We were asked to check up on them, so Filippo who was at Chimoré went to see them.  The head was terrified out of his wits and decided to hire a private plane to get flown out.  Since there was room for only him and 2 others, the remaining two had to stay on and the next day they decided to walk (50Kms.) to Villa Tunari where they had a car.  Since this guy then had to justify the expense of hiring a plane, he put the wind up everybody in the UN offices who started sending messages for us to evacuate.  Even if we had wanted to, that was impossible, because there was nowhere for us to go.  The only escape route is the river and we don't have a boat or a canoe.  Anyway, it was panic stations in Vienna and God knows where else.

The news regarding government  reaction to the blockade was worrying, because, as usual, the Minister of the Interior wanted to bring in the troops.  If that were to happen, it would have meant a massacre and a great deal of violence.  Edgar Tapia's daughter who lives in Germany called up to say that there had been a news flash in Germany that 2 members of the US DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) had been kidnapped.  That gave us some cause for concern because then the US would definitely have wanted to put the boot in. It was difficult to get any reliable information about this, but we eventually found out that what had happened was that these two had been trying to pass themselves off as doctors in a Red Cross car but were detected by the campesinos, who took them out, gave them a real hiding and then let them go.  (This is the same ploy that they used in March when they used a UN vehicle to masquerade in).  It was worrying, because the silence was ominous (no helicopters or planes or anything like the last time) and we thought that the Americans were probably planning an Entebbe-type strike at night.

Eventually we prevailed upon Edgar Tapia to call all his government contacts to find out what was happening.  The Minister of the Interior wanted to strike, because, he said, the campesinos were behaving violently and had to be put down.  This was a patent lie:  the people were sitting out on the road - men, women and children - with their cooking pots and candles at night.  In view of this, Edgar provided true information based on what he had seen with his own eyes.  He called everyone he could get hold of, including the President's wife and son, and gave them reports of events.  This was most important because the only (mis)information they were getting was from US intelligence sources bent on armed intervention, and the fact that these people have known Edgar for many years and he has been involved in campesino affairs for decades meant that they could not disregard what he was saying. This sowed the seed of doubt as to the veracity of the other information, giving the other ministers who were not in favour of armed intervention something concrete to negotiate with and so any such action was postponed.

On the Monday (the fourth day of the blockade) the US was really getting itchy and they called a government ministerial meeting at the U.S. Embassy!!!  (If that isn't controlling the affairs in someone else's country,  I don't what is).  Intervention was on the cards again that day.  Again we pressed Edgar that he had to do something and the endless telephone calls began again.  Fortunately they yielded their fruit.  Next step - to try and get both sides together in some kind of meaningful discussions.  More phone calls.  Gradually the teachers and health workers worked out an arrangement.

All day Thursday (a full  week after the blockade had begun) the campesinos trailed up and down to the river and on the return journey they carried rags and sacks filled with stones.  Trees and branches and pieces of wood were beavered up to the road in readiness in case no agreement was reached.  In the afternoon negotiations were broken off.  Low profile policy once again. Under the trees at the entrance to the dairy the men sat sharpening their machetes.  Finally in the evening of Thursday May 5th.  it looked like some kind of agreement was being reached.

The campesino leaders came back from La Paz to explain the basis of the agreement they had made.  This then had to be submitted to popular assent and, if the grass-roots accepted the agreement, the barricades would be lifted.  The whole procedure is like something out of another century.  Since modern communication systems are virtually non-existent, everything must be done by word  of mouth, not much different from medieval kings and queens or their representatives touring their territory.  Effective communication is face to face.   The leaders from the Chapare began at Villa Tunari and processed along the route explaining the agreement.  As assent was given at the different spots the barricades there were lifted and the leaders continued to the next place.  After Chimoré, however, they only passed quickly through our barricade, because they wanted to go to Bulo Bulo first. In this area the Eje Pachacutec is strong, and therefore they believed it would  be better to convince the people there first.  Pachacutec was an Inca leader (I don't know what century yet) under whom the frontiers of the Inca Empire were extended by 250Kms. EVERY DAY and he just lopped off the heads of the vanquished - well, they did have a head trophy tradition.

At 10p.m. we went out to do the rounds of the barricades to see what was happening.  Great trees across the road, grass huts erected, people lying everywhere.  Under the MILKA sign lay lots of young men in a circle with their bag of coca leaf in the centre, all chewing quietly away.  The women had set up kitchens and were cooking and washing and tending to their children who lay on the ground.  Life goes on as usual within the bounds of abnormality.  One of the local leaders came across to greet us.  They do this as a sign to the people that you are friend not foe.  In the course of the week we had supplied them with pasteurized water, cheese and the last of the milk from the dairy.  They estimated that their leaders would not return before about 11p.m. but in fact it was almost midday on Friday before the barricade outside the dairy was lifted and we could get out.  Just as well, because we had run out of everything except cheese and yoghourt - no bread, no milk, no eggs, no fruit, no nothing.

Thousands of passengers, either in buses or trucks, sat there on the road for a full  week and nobody complained. What hardship you might say.   But is it?  In fact, in their own homes there is not much more in the way of creature comforts than what they had on the road.  No beds, mostly; no chairs.  In the evenings the people sit out on the roadside and chat.  In the daytime they sit on the ground to do their daily chores.  The children lie on the ground anyway.  They wash themselves and their clothes in the river.  Many people only have candlelight.

The lesson I learned from all this is that any country that governs its people on the basis of what pleases or displeases the US is going nowhere except down the drain.  There is no future until the nation is governed as an autonomous entity with its own goals and achievements set in accordance with the needs of the people.  The basic needs of these people are improved nutrition, education, health care and a basic infrastructure to allow the country to compete at a minimum level with the rest of the world.

I have just sent off a translation for the UNESCO encyclopedia on archaeological studies in South America.  Skeletal evidence shows that the women in the 10th century had little access to protein and that their diet consisted mainly of carbohydrates.  When the skeletons of today's women are examined by future archaeologists, they will find exactly the same.  Hardly a single girl after the onset of puberty has an unspoiled tooth in her head and by the age of 20-odd, once they have had a couple of children, they have no front teeth at all.  From my observations as I drive up and down this road, I would say that at least 60% of children do not attend school.  Health care is virtually non-existent.  Unless these priorities are set and a concerted effort is made to achieve concrete goals in these areas, Bolivia (and most the the Third World) is a write-off.

As for alternative development, the focus is all wrong.  It should be aimed at fostering small local initiatives, instead of embarking on a lot of white elephant projects with no future.  The burning question, however, is whether they really want alternative development to succeed...  I harbour great doubts in this regard.  Time will tell in this direction, because Robert's project has adopted a totally different approach from everyone else.  Fortunately, Filippo and Edgar also believe in sustainable development as the only viable path to follow, but we shall see just how serious the powers-that-be are about making it work, because parts of it CAN work.  But will they let them?

I have just read a book entitled "The Big White Lie - The CIA and the cocaine/crack epidemic" by Michael Levine, an ex-Drug Enforcement Agency man, who explains how for years the US has supported and kept in power all kinds of dictatorial and fascist régimes in South America, including the García Meza Dictatorship in Bolivia in the 80s on the basis that bigtime drug barons were (and are?) the strongest bulwark against the spread of communism.  Now, GET THAT! And the sad thing is that it is true.  Drug traffickers practise red blooded capitalism no holds barred and they own everybody who is anybody.  In the course of the last few months it has come out that the former government of Jaime Paz Zamora, which had always been held up as a paragon of virtue, was up to its neck with drug barons of every description - with the connivance of the US.  If you can get hold of that book you should read it.

.

THE MILKA ANNIVERSAR

2005-09-23T11:32:00.000+02:00

THE MILKA ANNIVERSARY FAIR

30.03.1994

March 29th. was the 3rd. anniversary of the founding of the dairy plant, so they had a fair.  All the milk producers came along and spent the day sitting around on the grass eating and drinking ambrosia, a beverage made with milk and an alcoholic drink, like an eau de vie.  It is traditionally made in the byre as soon as the cow is milked but here, of course, it was made with pasteurized milk.  I think it was pretty strong because it had 1L. of this alcoholic potion for every 3L of milk!  There was a band playing altiplano music with pan-pipes, wooden flutes (quenas) and a huge drum called a bombo.

The main events of the day were a bicycle race from Valle de Sajta to the dairy (about 15Km) and a five-aside football championship between the teams put up by all the associations participating in the project, a number of local teams  and the project team.  It lasted all day, and in the end the project team won against the Comité Cívico from Ivirgarzama.  The UMOPAR (the drug control police) wanted  to take part too, but none of the other teams would play against them so their kind offer had to be declined.

The local radio station sent along a representative to record the events.  As he was trying to record the prize-giving, the band kept playing away and beating on their drum. Someone told them to keep quiet for a minute or two but they just played on.  By the end of the day they had drunk 22L. of ambrosia and at 10p.m. went off on their truck still playing away for all they were worth.  Another association team also brought along a band, but they played a wider variety of instruments, such as the small South American guitar and mandolins.  They were very good indeed.

Another event of the day was a tombola with a small Holstein bull as the prize.  He had been wormed and washed and shampooed with my dog shampoo to get rid of the ticks and then brushed until he shone.  However, the person with the winning number was not there when the draw was made. He turned out to be a young boy from the village who likes animals so that worked out not too badly.

The day before the fair the producers were paid for February.  There are 280 of them and I got roped in to help out with the paying procedure.  It was quite interesting to see the number of people who could read and write, those who could only sign their names and those who can only make their mark with their thumb.  There were also people who could speak no Spanish at all.  Next month I am going to ask if I can help again, because I would like to do a survey to see what proportion of the illiterate people are women and also to see what relationship, if any, there is between illiteracy and the quality of the milk they produce, since hygiene and animal care play a large part in that.

MONTERO

2005-09-19T17:39:00.000+02:00

MONTERO

29.03.1994

In the middle of March a friend of the vet at the dairy came to visit. When he saw Simon he fell in love with him straight away and insisted that we should take him to a dog show which they were going to hold in Montero, near Santa Cruz in eastern Bolivia, about 250Kms. away.  Since it was at the week-end, we decided to go for the jaunt and so that I could see what that area is like.

The further you travel from the project area the fewer trees there are, because the colonization programme has led to the felling of forest.  The change is gradual, of course, but as you cross the River Ichilo which marks the border between the provinces of Cochabamba and Santa Cruz the difference is more marked, because Santa Cruz is the boom area and it has opted for cattle ranching.  The ranches are huge in Santa Cruz compared to the small "chacos" and "chacras" in Cochabamba.  First of all the pasture lands are similar to the "dehesas" in Andalucía or Extremadura with numerous trees left standing for shade, but the closer you get to Santa Cruz the fewer trees are left until, as Robert told me (because I did not get that far), Santa Cruz itself is like a desert with a tremendous erosion problem.  Since the trees have been cut down, it is windy there (This I noticed when we touched down in Santa Cruz on the incoming journey) and the wind increases the erosion.

The distance between Chimoré and Santa Cruz is more or less the same as to Cochabamba, but the road is infinitely better, being surfaced all the way except for a 50Km. stretch which is either a series of sand dunes or a quagmire, depending on the weather.  This stretch was also surfaced at one stage, but the Brazilian road-building company, Andrade y Gutiérrez, did not put in any drainage, so, when the rains came, they just washed the surface away.  The asphalt was also supposed to be a certain thickness but when it washed away it was clear that it was only about 5cm. thick!  Unlike the road to Cochabamba, which crosses mountains and so forth, there is no excuse here for bad  road-building, because the terrain is absolutely flat.  The only technical point to be borne in mind is that when the rains come they are torrential and good drainage is essential. Never mind!  They have just won another tender to build more roads somewhere else in the country.

As the terrain changes, so does everything else.  There are fewer indigenous people wearing the traditional Andean dress.  There are more European features to be seen and a smattering of Brazilian-type Negroid mixes.  The villages are hives of activity and, like the farming, things are done on a much larger scale.  The rice de-husking factories (ingenios) are proper factories with silos etc. and not little one-man-band, back-yard activities.  People do not cart their goods on their backs as they do on the altiplano and in the Chapare: there are plenty of horses and carts.  Most people ride horses using the traditional Andalusian tack. The sensation it gave was that you were getting nearer to Argentina and Brazil, which is true in geographical terms, of course, but also in cultural terms.  Altogether the pulse of the area  is quite different.

The dog show was to be held at a place called Guabirá Expo-norte, which turned out to be the Montero fairground on the outskirts of the town.  The agricultural fair was on, which is why they were having the show at all, and business was brisk.  There was a magnificent bull hall with beautiful animals immaculately turned out.  Another pavilion housed the horses, also in peak condition.  The installations were first class with a clean individual stall for each animal with its feed and water containers and plenty of straw on the ground.  There were also stalls with agricultural machinery, mainly for the harvesting of sugar cane, and  a Mennonite display with hand-made ox yokes and other leather harness.  They also had a model pump made of wood which consisted of a wheel with a cord and little rubber rings.  When the handle of the wheel was turned the system pumped up water from a well.  They had three models: one for wells up to 10m. deep, another up to 20m. and a third for wells of up to 30m.  Most ingenious.

It is interesting that there is a considerable Mennonite community here.  They have immigrated mostly from Canada and they wear distinctive clothes: the men wear blue denim dungarees with a checked shirt underneath and a big hat.  The women wear long dresses with long sleeves and a scarf covering all their hair, for all the world like orthodox Jewish women.  Their children are spotlessly clean and impeccably well behaved.  They are farmers and run their farms on a traditional basis using animal traction and intermediate technology, like the water pumping system.

Eating places were not scarce and, once again, the predominant food is, like in Argentina, great steak barbecues, which people were tucking into with gusto.

At the dog ring the police put on a display first.  We did not get to see that because they asked everyone with a dog to move away out of sight of the ring so that the police dogs would not be distracted.  Then there was a kennel club exhibition of dogs belonging to the Santa Cruz Kennel Club.  They mostly belonged to one lady who owns a breeding kennel.  She had Siberian huskies, salukis, Yorkshire terriers, miniature pinschers, Kerry  blues and Argentinian dogos, which are white like bulldogs but bigger and very aggressive.  There was also an Old English Sheepdog and I can't remember the rest.  From her married surname, Justiniano, the kennel owner may be a relative of one of the government ministers.  She was a typical example of the archetypal Santa Cruz woman, who, from all accounts, is not shy to show her female attributes to best advantage.  However that may be, she certainly was a professional at showing her dogs off to best advantage. She took each one around the ring and then a minion came on and stood with it while she took the next one around.

Then we had the competition and Simon won first prize.  Amazingly, he behaved very well, walking and trotting around the ring nicely.  The only flaw was when the vet came to examine him he wanted to jump up and kiss him all over, which was not in the script at all.  Afterwards people kept coming up and asking if they could have their photo taken with him and he posed like a film star.  Other people, who had long-haired dogs, wanted to know which shampoo I used on him and other such trivia. We met other vets who insisted that we should register him with the kennel club and show him.  He is probably the only dog of this breed in Bolivia and they are fascinated by the novelty value.  Some of them knew something about the breed because they had seen them in the US. Anyway, it was fun and took Robert's mind off the problems of work for a day, which was a good thing in itself. All in all, the only trivial day we have had since we arrived!

A FIRST UPRISING

2005-09-18T15:20:00.000+02:00

A FIRST UPRISING

07.03.1994

The events of the weekend March 5-6 were unexpected, dramatic, perturbing at times, but uplifting and gratifying on the other hand.

Early on Saturday morning (about 8 o'clock) after Robert had left and I was on my way to Chimoré, one of the drivers flagged me down on the road to ask how he could contact Robert because the truck which was collecting the milk for the project dairy had been detained at Entre Ríos by the campesinos who had mobilized during the night and all the tracks were blocked.  I raced to the Chimoré office where Robert was supposed to be but he was not there.  However, the watchman said that he had heard him on the radio to the driver, a young fellow called Oswaldo and only about 18, trying to reassure him, but they had not been able to make direct contact with each other.  This probably meant that he was making his way to the scene so I returned home.

Robert had come back to the dairy plant to pick up René, the manager, who would be able to direct him to where the driver was.  Radio communication was out of the question from then on because the campesinos are highly suspicious of anyone using a radio since they think that they are probably spies passing on information to the security forces.  Robert and René had to talk their way past all the blocks, but progress was slow as at every block they had to convince the people that they were from UNIDO and that they were only trying to get their driver out and what was the point of establishing good relations if they were going to be put in the same class as everyone else when it came to the crunch etc. etc.  They left Marcelo, a vet who had just started work at the plant that very day, as a voluntary hostage at one point and continued on their way.  They allowed a campesino to drive the vehicle so that there would be no suspicion.

About 10:30 the helicopters started to arrive.  They were swooping over the roof of the house where they then turned around and went back to the area where most people were concentrated.  Robert and René had to abandon the vehicle several times and run for cover because they were firing tear gas grenades and smoke bombs.  The confusion was great.  Finally they managed to reach the milk vehicle.  Fortunately Oswaldo, young as he is, had had enough presence of mind to turn around and go back to the milk producers and return their milk to them, since by the time he got to the dairy it would have been no use.  It was 2:30 in the afternoon when they returned.  Oswaldo was pale and shocked because at one point a number of people who had been hired by DIRECO, a government body for the forcible eradication of coca, had jumped on the back of the truck narrowly escaping machete blows from the campesinos who were in hot pursuit behind them.  One of the fugitives was his own cousin but, despite this, after a few hundred metres he stopped the truck and told them he was sorry but he could not allow them to travel in it and they got off. His cousin's head had been split by a machete blow and he is now in coma in Santa Cruz. The others have all disappeared.

In the middle of all this commotion two UNIDO people had come to do a study for the setting up of micro-industries plus the travel writer from the Financial Times.  We had something to eat at the dairy dining-room until word came that the main road was going to be blocked by a march so they had to be to be removed.  Off they all went and I stayed.

As evening fell, one of the dairy workers and the new vet who had gone to the village came to say that there was talk in the village, where 15,000 people from all over the countryside were now gathered, that one of the UNIDO drivers had once worked for DIRECO and people were talking of coming to the dairy.  All these thousands of people had been out in the blazing sun all day long with nothing to eat or drink.  The adults keep going by chewing coca leaves which mitigates hunger, but what about the children?

From the description they had I could work out which driver it might be, so I decided to go with one of the workers to Chimoré to try and contact Robert.  Fortunately when we were about half way there we saw his car coming back so we turned around.  When we gave him the news he went pale and raced back to the office to try and find out if this was true.  In the meantime all communication in Spanish ceased on the radio.  Only Quechua could be heard as the campesinos sent messages to their families to prepare food and bring it down and they would meet them at predetermined points.

When he and Edgar came back, they said that Mr. Baker's wife (he is the essential oils expert) had arrived (which was true) and had invited us to a cocktail party!, (which wasn't) so I went and got changed, packed overnight things in a bag plus the dogs' food and we set off.  Since there was a shortage of food in the village with so many people around and the men were drinking chicha, the possibilities of people assaulting the dairy, which is on the opposite river bank from the village,  were quite real, so we decided that discretion was the better part of valour and it was more prudent not to provoke them by having these "gringos" around the place.  It turned out that this driver, the son of an Italian, had indeed worked for DIRECO, so we drove to Villa Tunari where he lived, about an hour and a half away, and stayed the night at a hotel there.  Another worry was that this driver was the one in charge of transporting the two UNIDO personnel!

On Sunday morning Robert and I went on a recce to find out where this guy lived.  We found the UNIDO car and then Robert and Edgar went to speak to him.  He was dismissed there and then and they collected his UNIDO  polo shirt and hat.  That was a relief to get rid of him, because his presence on the team could have been a danger to everyone.

When we reached the dairy, to our surprise we found that the staff had baked a cake for Robert's birthday, so we had birthday cake and decided what steps to take next.  There was still a shortage of food in the village, of course, and the village authorities were appealing to everyone to share what food they had with the people from other places who had none.  In view of this, and as a means of repairing any possible damage which might have been caused by the talk on the previous night, it was decided that the truck should take fresh water and two smaller vehicles would take 1,000L. of milk and 200Kg. of cheese to be distributed.  Edgar Tapia, who is well versed in political manoevrings, prepared a statement in Spanish which was then translated into Quechua to be read on the radio.  Basically the message was that in response to the appeals of the authorities and as a humanitarian measure the dairy was providing milk and cheese for the women and children.

At 1p.m. we set off for the village.  As we entered people surrounded the vehicle.  Most of them cannot read so they just stared at the UNIDO emblem and eyed us most suspiciously, especially since Marta, René's wife who is Mexican, her two children and I are all fair-skinned and, in comparison to these people, so is Robert and we all have European features.  We smiled and waited until Robert and Edgar spied someone they knew, whereupon they got out and went off to talk to him.  At that point Roberto Céspedes, one of the chief campesino leaders and the head of one of the Associations involved in Robert's project, saw them and came straight across.  That was our passport to safety.

When he was told what we planned to do, he immediately arranged for the bus station to be cleared so that the vans could park in there in relative shade.  He then announced that the women and children should form a queue.  The campesino leaders, armed with pointed staves, then took charge of keeping order and thousands of people queued for their glass of milk and slice of cheese.  When the women and children had all been served, what was left was distributed among the men.  Everyone could have water.  It was a gift in itself to see those tiny toddlers gulping down their milk and the women coming up and thanking you for helping them.  Three and a half hours later when all the provisions had run out we packed up and left.

Unfortunately, as we were about to finish, the TV cameras arrived and started filming.  This we did not want, because all these things are interpreted depending on the slant they are given by the TV producer, but they would not listen and carried on filming anyway.

The scene was totally medieval.  Here were thousands of people milling around, poor and ragged, and the only arms at their disposal were sharpened staffs and in some cases bows and arrows! It reminded me in some ways of what it must have been like in Vietnam, because before Saturday there was not an inkling that a mobilization was planned, but their own jungle drum system works wonderfully well and on Saturday all these thousands of people just materialized as day broke. Many of them had walked for miles throughout the night  and had to make the same trek back again when it was all over.  They had set a deadline till 3p.m. on Sunday for the Prefect to come and discuss their situation, but he did not come.  How could he?  His son is the director of DIRECO which is responsible for the eradication of their coca plantations.  Last night they were waiting for a decision to be made as to whether they should send a delegation to La Paz.  That is less than useless because they do not listen to them.

This is now a crossroads because, depending on how the government decides to tackle the situation, the Chapare will either be militarized or they will start negotiations.  The only people who benefit from all this are the big-time drug-dealers, because in the last week the price of 1Kg. of coca leaf has fallen from 360 bolivianos to 82, so we must ask ourselves who are running this show.  In Villa Tunari, while Robert and Edgar were dismissing the driver, in the full light of day a truck was being loaded up with tons of coca, beautifully packed in white parcels, and it would drive without incident through all the police controls.  This man is well known and nobody says a word while the campesinos are  hounded and beaten: it's crazy!

Depending on how this initiative was interpreted or misinterpreted, Robert might have lost his job, but in any event I think they did the right thing.  Since we have been here, I have come to understand why the situation in Somalia and the war in Bosnia are such a mess.  The UN is a totally useless organization, not because the people on the ground are not competent, but because the fat cats sitting in their plush offices are a shower of incompetent nitwits whose only concern is how to hang on to their post and all the privileges that go with it.  They do nothing and decide nothing.  It is frustrating and appalling. Not only that, but the organization is so hide-bound and procedure-bound that the correct procedure takes precedence over the reasons why the project is being run in the first place. From the point of view of the project, I think the initiative went a long way to dispelling any suspicion regarding the orientation, and in the dairy plant it has served to forge a team spirit and sense of solidarity which were totally lacking.

On the Saturday, as they were trying to make their way through the blockade, the campesinos kept telling Robert and René that a UNIDO vehicle had already gone through and they assured them that this could not be so, since theirs was the only one.  However, on Monday "intelligence channels" revealed that the armed forces are masquerading as UN people, or not even so much masquerading as using vehicles with UN stickers to gain access to places where they could not normally go.  However, some of these people are going around in combat fatigues, so the only conclusion to be drawn from that is that they want to discredit the UN and the only conclusion which can follow from that is that they do not want these programmes to succeed.  The final conclusion, if you follow that line of reasoning, is that they are controlled by the drug barons.  No other conclusion is possible.  If that is the case, then, no negotiations will take place and they can militarize the whole area.

On Friday March 11th. a government delegation with a retinue of some 50 journalists, both national and foreign, wanted to visit the project accompanied by the chief of UMOPAR  (that is the military body for the forcible eradication of coca financed and trained by the US Drug Enforcement Agency) plus a military convoy.  Robert and Edgar refused to have anything to do with it and told the UN people in La Paz that it was a totally irresponsible move.  They managed to convince them of that, but on the Friday, despite all kinds of protestations, the UMOPAR chief still managed to squeeze through and visit the dairy plant. Robert handed him a yellow overall which he had to put on over his military uniform.  The atmosphere could be cut with a knife!  However, all the military retinue were refused entry and Robert and Edgar have already explained the situation to their association leaders, so for the moment at least the crisis is past.

BUA RECUARTE THE YU

2005-09-12T12:54:00.000+02:00

BUA RECUARTE - THE YUKIS

01.03.1994

Some time after he came to the project, conversation  with one of the agronomists, who is a Quechua, turned to the tribal people in Bolivia.  As Robert expressed an interest in the topic, José mentioned the possibility of visiting one of these tribes and, of course, Robert showed even more enthusiasm.  Nothing more was said, but the day after I arrived in the Chapare (Feb. 12) José came to say that he had managed to make contact with the Yuki tribe and it might be possible to visit them. He himself had tried to contact them 3 years ago, but he did not dare enter their territory because he did not have a contact.  The priest from the parish of San Carlos was wounded by an arrow when he once tried to land without permission. Now a member of the tribe lives in Chimoré, the village where the project office is, and José got to know him.  It was arranged that this contact would speak to the other members of the tribe and see what they thought.

On February 28th. José was calling insistently on the radio and Robert could not understand why, so he went up to the essential oils plant which is where José works.  Lo and behold two young couples with a 2 month old baby had come up from the tribal area to examine the prospective visitors - complete with bows and arrows!  They are keen to make contact because they are under the yoke of an American missionary, called Alan (I don't know whether this is his name or whether it is Allen a surname) who has forced European clothing upon them and forbidden the use of their traditional medicine and they are having health problems.  They want to have an alternative and would like to find an outlet for their handicraft, which is the reason why they brought along some bows and arrows to show.   Robert bought some from them for they are beautiful: the bow is made of ebony as are the tips whilst the arrow shaft is made of bamboo with coloured bird feathers at the end for the flight.  Each arrow head is different depending on the kind of animal it is designed to kill.  For large animals the arrow tip has a kind of elongated bamboo "spoon".  When the arrow sticks in the animal, the weight of the shaft pulls downwards and the blood runs out through the "spoon" until the animal drops dead.

Having examined the proposed visitors, at first they wanted to charge 200 bolivianos per person, but Robert said he did not think that they were zoo exhibits.  If they wanted to be that he would have no part of it and would not go, but if what they wanted was for him to go and evaluate their situation and see what outlets could be found for them and help in the medical line, then that was a different ballgame.  A visit was arranged for March 11th.  The expert in essential oils, David Baker, was there during this encounter and he was dying to come also, so he and his Granadian wife, who was due to arrive on March 4th, came on the expedition too.  We had to get equipped with sleeping bags and mosquito nets!

There are some 34 families, about 160 people, in the Yuki tribe and they are fortunate in that they would appear to have secured their territory.  There is another tribe, the Yuracarés, who are apparently being squeezed between the Yukis, the colonizers from  a settlement called Villa 14 and logging interests.  They are more difficult to contact and their predicament would seem to be more acute.

On the appointed day Robert was unfortunately unable to come on the trip on account of an impromptu visit from a government minister and the chief of the UMOPAR which had been announced the night before.  Robert was refusing to meet the military personnel and also refusing them entry to the project in view of the damage this could do. So, he had to remain behind.  We therefore decided to make this first visit a one day affair.

Setting off from home at 6.30, by the time everyone was organized and we reached the river bank it was 8.30.  The boatman, a member of the Yuki tribe who now lives in Chimoré, arrived shortly afterwards with his dugout canoe and we all clambered in.  The canoe is made of a tropical hardwood called "ochoó" and it has narrow bench-like seats at intervals. This particular one was powered by an outboard motor, although the traditional canoe is manoevred using a broad-ended paddle.

The course of the river Chimoré is approximately 1Km. wide, although at the moment the water does not fill the whole course.  After heavy rains, when the river is in spate, it is impossible to travel on it because the flow of water is too powerful: it uproots trees and carries them downstream making any river-borne travel extremely dangerous.  On our trip Ademar Arias, the canoe owner, navigated for his son who manipulated the engine.  Navigation involved spying out barely covered sandbanks  and pointing out the route to avoid the large number of tree trunks sticking up out of the water or lying under the surface.

On both banks the vegetation is thick and tangled especially the further downstream one travels because then the settlers are fewer and consequently interference with the natural growth is less.  After about one and a half hours travel the settlers are left behind and Yuki territory begins.  Numerous kingfishers were to be seen diving for food and settling again on branches of fallen trees.  Also to be seen were herons, both of the great grey variety and white ones, tern-like birds, and many other divers and waders as well as an ibis.  We also saw three turtles.  All along the river route are magnificent deserted beaches of fine, white sand.

Three hours after our departure we finally reached the Yuki village, called Buá Recuarté.  We did not call on the American missionary who lives in style in a pretty large house with a very large radio communications antenna and AN AIRSTRIP!!  The whole community,  men women and children, was waiting for us in the community house.  Having explained that we had come mainly to hear what they had to say and find out what they would like to do, we did just that.  The chief of the community, a young man called Jonathan(!), explained that they had three main areas of concern.  They had health problems and required help to obtain medicines.  They would like to find an outlet for crafts as a source of cash because, if they had a medical emergency, although they have an outboard motor, they had no money to buy fuel, and they would like to cultivate some crops both for their own consumption and perhaps for sale outside the community.

Ademar wanted to provide them with a ready solution, suggesting that they should cut down 10 hectares of forest and plant banana, but fortunately Jose, who is an agronomist, intervened and explained that, since they had no agricultural tradition, that would be unwise.  The first thing they would have to find out is where to plant, depending on the soil and climatic conditions, then what to plant and how to rotate their crops so as not to deplete the soil and then have to cut down more forest, because that way in 20 years they would have no forest left and no soil either.  They understood the logic of that since conservation is an integral part of their culture.

Then we had a look at their crafts.  They make hunting implements, such as bows and arrows which could be marketed as decorating items, hammocks made from a string made out of tree bark and bags and baskets made from the same material.  The hammocks and bags, which also have beads incorporated in the design, could certainly find a market.  However, since there are so few of them, Jose pointed out that it would be better if they combined forces with their Yura neighbours, who have a larger repertoire of crafts.  The Yukis and the Yura are traditional enemies, but it was pointed out that when it is a question of survival it is better to work together rather than against one another. After about two hours we left having agreed that they should contact the Yuras and set up a date for another joint meeting at which these matters could be taken further.

Each extended family has a wooden house raised slightly off the ground.  They have a school building, a building which proclaimed that it was a clinic but did not seem to have any supplies and a carpentry workshop which does not function.  Cocoa and coffee grow freely as well as sugar cane.  The children use the cocoa husks to make little toy boats.  Some people had little monkeys no bigger than a Barbie doll: one was russet coloured and another one was a beautiful greenish-yellow.

Their language, which is rather harsh and guttural with many aspirations, does not belong to the Quechua group.  The language has been written down (presumably by the missionaries) and there were children's books there.  These, I imagine, had been printed by the mission.  The role of the mission remains a bit of a mystery to me.  Apart from brainwashing them with outside ideas and divorcing them from their native culture (they have lost all knowledge of their traditional natural medicine), I did not see much else.  Why is this man, who has been there for 29 years, not helping them with their health, cultivation and marketing problems?  Someone who is in the media has suggested that what the "pastor´" is really involved in is shipping cocaine.  Can that be true?  Nothing is too fanciful here.

P.D. When I returned to Chimoré in 2003, I arrived by bus at dead of night in the middle of the rainy season and had to climb over bodies lying in the dirt street to get into the only hotel (That is an optimistic description) to spend the night.  The following morning I saw that the bodies I had stepped over were those of Yuki tribespeople who are being flushed out of their lands and are now destitute.  It was a sorrowful sight to see.  They are despised by the Quechua colonists and their future is bleak indeed.  I subsequently contacted Survival International but, although they were aware of  developments about ten years our of date, the Yukis are not a priority for them and no action has been taken.

LA CANCHA AND CARNIV

2005-09-11T15:39:00.000+02:00

LA CANCHA AND CARNIVAL

A visit to La Cancha, the vast market, part of which is covered and part of which is open, is an interesting experience.  Apart from the fact that it is large (I spent 2 hours trying to find a place but could not), it sells everything from electronic goods to shoe laces.  There is a gallery which sells only cloth with little cubicles where tailors and dressmakers sew frantically on their Singer sewing machines. Another gallery is full of shoes, another electrical goods, another plastic ware and cleaning materials and so on.  Dotted at judicious intervals are places where food is cooked in enormous cauldrons and served at tables covered with plastic tablecloths where the market people can eat.

At least one section is devoted to food.  Indigenous women sit hunkered down surrounded by large baskets filled with fruit and vegetables.  "Compráme, caserita, comprá unos plátanos.  Papas, durazno, broccoli ....." - an incessant litany of all the things you can buy.  They don't call you María like they do in Andalucía, but casera (housewife) or mamita from the Quechua mama which is used in direct speech to refer to any female person no matter how young.  In between annoucements they eat stew - eternally tripe and pasta it seems to me - from plastic or enamel bowls.

The meat section follows.  No antiseptic packaging here divorcing the red objects on offer from the reality of where it came from. Men wheel wheelbarrows overflowing with bleeding meat through to the stalls where it is required, the ears still furrily in place and the eyes too.  To one side sits a woman patiently scraping the fur off the skins with a blade, much as people have done since the dawn of time.  The blade may be of metal now, but the process remains unchanged since the Stone Age.

Much crowing and squawking and cackling floats down from another passageway.  Here squat the women with their wooden crates and cardboard boxes out of which crane chickens and ducks and turkeys and rabbits.  Hamsters lie huddled up together in their boxes.  I suppose they are eaten here too: after all their name in Spanish is little rabbits from the Indies and, after the llama, they were the first animals to be domesticated by the Andean peoples.  The odd rooster runs around loose crowing all the while, from time to time jumping up on a shelf or some other vantage point to get a better view.

In the midst of it all tiny little ragged men stagger under the weight of the loads they carry on their backs.  The loads, which are secured by ropes tied around their chests and backs, (not like in Guatemala where they use a wide strip of woven cloth  and bear the weight on their foreheads) are almost as big as they are, and they bend double beneath them, their eyes fixed firmly on the ground.

Much in evidence at the beginning of February were all kinds of colourful masks, a must at Carnival time.  However, for the children the most important artefact is a water gun.  They run around squirting water at each other and at any unsuspecting passer-by who might happen along.  Also in great demand are bags of balloons.  This is because in Cochabamba at Carnival time children and young people blow up the balloons, fill them with water and then throw them at the young girls as they pass by.  However, there have been some incidents in the town because some smart characters have been blowing up 2 or even 3 balloons together and adding ice to the water, and this, when thrown, is a lethal weapon.  The police are to be out in force keeping an eye on the revellers to make sure that they do not surpass the limits of fun.

Merrymaking hots up - or should I say wets up? - from Friday until Shrove Tuesday when it reaches its peak.  On the Monday it is Trade Union revelry: pick-up trucks ride round the town full of workers armed with buckets of water and balloons which they throw, filled with water, at the pedestrians.  The children, for their part, stand at strategic points along the way with buckets of water and return the missiles.  They also ride around with huge water guns and target people as they go.  I have been keeping safely out of the way.

Shrove Tuesday is the BIG DAY.  On that day the Ch'alla (the apostrophe denotes a glottal stop) takes place.  Originally this is no doubt a fertility rite, because in the afternoon families prepare to eat their "puchero", the typical dish for this day, but, before they eat, half of the food along with drink is poured on the earth as an offering to the Pachamama, or Mother Earth, thanking her for her goodness during the previous year and asking her to be bountiful during the year to come.  The custom has been extended to include the tools of the modern world, so that office workers and shopkeepers etc. "wet the head" of the tools which help them earn their living.  Since all businesses are closed on Shrove Tuesday, they have this party on the previous Friday when not much work is done!  It is also the custom to make any investments at this time, so if you buy a house or a car or anything else, you have a "ch'alla" for it and decorate it with streamers and balloons.  People also buy new clothes now.  Since we had just bought our Mitsubishi in preparation for moving to the Chapare where some mode of transport is essential, a car, we had to "ch'alla" it too!  Then everyone has open house and neighbours visit one another.

There are lots of convents around the house where we stay in Cochabamba and they also paid courtesy calls on one another: young nuns were posted as lookouts at the corners to warn the others when someone was coming.  All great fun!

In the morning in the country the fields are blessed and seeds scattered and in the towns people bring along the tools of their trade (taxis, buses etc) to be blessed. Another custom is that on Shrove Tuesday men dress up as women and vice versa, another inequivocal clue that this is/was a fertility rite.

Then things die down until "Temptation Sunday" when there is a big parade through the town.  All this takes place to the inevitable accompaniment of fireworks at all hours of the day and night.  Fortunately after Shrove Tuesday we came down to the Chapare where it is altogether quieter in that respect.

08.02.94

PEOPLEWATCHING

2005-09-08T09:36:00.000+02:00

PEOPLE-WATCHING

19.01.1994

We have now got a telephone in the house in the Chapare.   Well, we have got a telephone when it works, which is not always, but it is better than nothing, I suppose.

UNESCO is proving to be a faithful friend.  They have sent me 2 small jobs so far and this week I hope to receive a larger one: three chapters for the History of Mankind encyclopaedia.  They are all about archaeology between 700 and 1,500: one on sites in Central America and the Caribbean, the second on sites in the Andean region and the third on sites in the Amazon region.  Of course, they will be all the more interesting since I am actually here.  The only problem is that the second translation nearly never appeared because the courier company simply didn't tell me anything about it.  I managed to get it because the driver went to collect a packet they had notified me about on March 8th.  Four visits proved fruitless and on March 18th. we all went to Cochabamba, but the courier office was closed.  I managed to spy someone in the parent company office and got him to go with the driver to get the key and open up the courier office (the following day there was to be a civil strike, so I HAD to get it that day).  Knowing how things work (or don't), the driver personally went through every envelope and packet in the office and found my translation which, officially, I knew nothing about.  I hope the same does not occur again.  They ought to be a little more careful next time, because the day after the strike I went in myself and tore strips off the poor guy who didn't know what had hit him.  He was further embarrassed because there were people waiting to send or receive packages and they could all hear what I was saying.  He kept wanting to provide some justification, but I just didn't let him speak at all (As far as I was concerned, there was none).  I was FURIOUS!  Just at this moment I have a problem in that my laser printer has developed a fault and I have to get it repaired - and pronto.

In between times I am teaching the campesino association members how to use Wordperfect, so that when their computers arrive for their agroindustrial plants someone will be in a position to use them and they won't be so much waste material standing around. Once they get the hang of that I will probably have to teach them basic book-keeping.  It is quite an experience to see those hands, some of them more used to wielding a machete, manipulate a mouse!  Some of the least expected people are the most adroit.  My best pupil so far is a little lady in full traditional dress who took to the computer like a duck to water - no fear, nothing, she just dived in head first.  Quick of mind too.

Sitting around in public places - and I have been doing a lot of that since I've been here - is highly educational.  The place where I have spent most time is at the telephone company's office to send faxes.  Here you realize pretty rapidly that the world of instant communication and the global village are rather distant concepts.

To send a fax you have to fill in a fax request form (there are also request forms for long distance calls and telegrammes) which you take to a queue, and when you reach the head of it you hand the request form, along with your fax, to the man (it is usually a man, whilst the telephonists are usually women) who charges you a deposit of 25Bs. and tells you to take a seat.  The document is then taken to the telex and fax office, which is around the corner and down a corridor, where it is handed to the operator who, in the fulness of time, will send it.  When he or she (the fax operator can be of either sex) has sent it, all the transmission information is entered and the fax, together with the transmission printout, is returned to the first man who then enters the data in his computer which proceeds to print out the bill.  Your fax is then returned to you with the bill and, usually, some money, because a 1 page fax to Europe works out at 22.5Bs.  This procedure may take anything from 15 minutes to an hour and a half. It will be interesting to see how much a similar fax will cost from a private telephone line, but I have not had the chance to find out yet.  (A one page fax to Europe costs 10.14Bs. from a private phone, so quite a little profit there for the telephone company).

It is during these long vigils that I have the opportunity to observe the other mortals who are waiting to make telephone calls, send faxes or telegrammes.  Apart from the people who are sending faxes, who are usually employees from small companies which do not possess their own machine, most of the people waiting are indigenous people trying to call their families.  Since most of them come from small villages where there is usually only one phone box, they have to wait endlessly for the person they wish to speak to to be located.

"Juana Mamami!  The person you wish to speak to is not available.  Will you wait?"

“·Yes, I'll wait"

"Julián Valencia, no person of that name is known there.  You must have the wrong number" ..... and so it goes on, and they wait uncomplaining and shrouded in infinite patience until their call finally yields its fruit and they are told to proceed to one of the call boxes.

A large number of the people are trying to call their sons who are doing their military service.  He is not on duty at the moment.  He has gone out.  Call back in three hours .....  But then they do manage to make contact and when the father comes out of the box he relays the information to those waiting.

"He says he took the train from Santa Cruz to Tarija and the fare was 30Bs.  He says he is well and is surrounded by his companions and friends.  He says to tell Mother not to worry.  He is fine."

This business of the military service is quite a phenomenon.  On the whole the sons of the ruling classes, due to their "enchufes" or other privileges conferred by their class, manage to evade this "patriotic duty", with the result that the majority of the people who do military service are poor and, generally speaking, indigenous people (the two almost inevitably go hand in hand).  This is amazingly shortsighted on the part of the authorities, it seems to me, because in the event of civil strife and an uprising the only people who have been taught the use of arms are the indigenous communities who, in my view, are the ones who would want to take up arms.  However, they don't seem to have thought of this minor detail!

One day, as I waited for my fax to be processed, a little Indian girl came up to play with the dogs and we got engaged in conversation.  Her name was Esther, she was 10 years old, and she had a dog called Lisa which she bathed every Saturday. She, together with her father and mother, had left home at 6am. to put a call through to her brother who was doing his military service.  They had been waiting for 2 hours already.  She was very curious about where I was calling to, and when I told her I was sending a fax to France, she exclaimed "France!  Oh, it must be beautiful there!"  (As it turned out, she didn't have a clue where France was and I had to explain to her). I told her there were beautiful things and horrible things everywhere, but she didn't seem convinced.  Then she wanted to know how I had reached Bolivia. The idea of travelling in a plane was most seductive: that really had to be the most wonderful thing in the world!  Then she asked me if I liked Bolivia.  When I told her that I did, she looked amazed and said, "Well, I don't."  Why not?  "In Bolivia everything is filthy and I hate filth.  I would like to be a doctor when I grow up to teach people how to be clean."

The various stages of "acculturation" or "cultural disintegration" (depending on how you look at it) are also apparent at the telephone company: from the Juana Mamamis with their polleras or wide pleated skirts covered by a full length apron, their hair beautifully plaited and topped by a magnificent brown bowler hat with beige trim around the brim and a little beige tassle hanging over the left side to the little indigenous lady wearing western dress, every step is represented.  Generally the first identifying feature to disappear is the hat, then the voluminous skirt and then the plaits.  The very last symbol to disappear is the colourful woven cloth or awayu worn over the shoulders, presumably because it is a useful article in which babies and wares may be carried without hindering arm movements.

On the whole, the men wear western attire from the moment they come to the city.  Only old men, who have lost hope of ever finding employment and have given themselves over to mendicancy, continue to wear their ch'ulos, and they will never be making telephone calls - only sitting on the steps at the entrance begging.  Young male children also wear these colourful woollen hats with ear flaps.  When they grow up they abandon them.  In a way the mode of dress, indicative of the degree of (at least outward) acculturation, reflects the relative positions of men and women in the chain of cultural transmission.  The men must conform to the pressures of the society in which they are trying to make a living while the women cling to their origins and are the main links in the chain of cultural continuity.

The position of women in Bolivia is quite interesting.  There seem to be many women (of the privileged classes) in remunerated work and in positions of responsibility: the new chief of customs is a women.  Among the  indigenous community I believe that the machista philosophy is not a native one.  Rather the concept of the "couple" - of a "whole"  - is the one which is respected.  However, ill-treatment of women is quite commonplace nonetheless, and not only among the lower classes.  According to an article published in the paper the other day a large percentage of the women who report ill-treatment are from fairly well-to-do homes.

Now, here's the rub.  Apparently Bolivian legislation "authorizes" the progenitors and direct descendants of any woman to "chastise" her.  This privilege also extends to brothers-in-law and other more distant male relatives if they all live under the same roof!  Naturally the article was asking for this anachronism to be removed.

The ubiquitous baby is another phenomenon.  Almost every indigenous women is carrying a baby on her back.  They are swaddled like mummies and, wrapped in their cloths, lie unprotesting on the ground or wherever their mothers happen to leave them while they earn their living selling or whatever.  We have been here for more than a month and today, January 19th, I heard a baby cry for the first time.  There must be a secret somewhere which western mothers ought to learn!

BOLIVIA FIRST IMPRE

2005-09-07T10:53:00.000+02:00

BOLIVIA - FIRST IMPRESSIONS

06.01.1994

In the words of Dilip Mukherjee, the tea expert from Calcutta, this is a God-forsaken place.  I would qualify this by quoting Porfirio Díaz, president of Mexico at the time of the Mexican Revolution in 1910, who said, "Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States".  Although, in geographical terms, Bolivia is much further removed than Mexico from the United States, the one remaining superpower dominates every aspect of life.

Government policy is determined by whether the U.S. approves or not, and mostly policy revolves around the U.S. drug eradication programme: if you are a good boy and do as we say then we will give you aid.  When government people here say "and then the ambassador came in", they mean the US ambassador - nobody else counts! The newspapers are dedicated to articles about the U.S. reaction to Bolivia's coca programmes. Since we saw the first television interview with the President, who said a lot of sensible things, we have since come to think that he must be a CIA plant.

Unfortunately, aid comes mostly in the form of materiel for repressive measures.  One example will suffice:  a project was allocated US$16M. for alternative development.  However, of the 16M. 15.3M were spent on machinery of war by USAID and only $700,000 were spent on anything to benefit the people, in this case a pig-rearing installation, except that $700,000 was not enough to finish it, so the building is standing there with no electricity, no water and no sewage, but the USAID plaque is up on the wall to celebrate this magnificent donation.

Mexico may have been far from God, but My God! God's self-appointed representatives are here in force - mainly in the shape of U.S.-based evangelical churches: Pentecostals, Seventh Day Adventists, Church of Christ of the Latter Day Saints etc., etc., etc.  This, of course, is all a part of the Rockefeller policy of promoting religious proselytization as part of the anti-communist campaign.  Communism may have disappeared as a force to be reckoned with, and the US may not have agreed with many of the underlying ideas, but they certainly believe wholeheartedly in Karl Marx's opinion that "Religion is the opiate of the people": if you brainwash people with these sectarian ideas you have them under your thumb and captive as long as you can keep them there.

The most unacceptable part of this, as far as I am concerned, is that the churches they build (at least in and near the cities) are enormous edifices, all the more striking since they are surrounded by poor, insanitary housing and squalor, and there would seem to be very little effort put into improving the living conditions of the people.  Filippo, the Italian agronomist, spent last year in the south of the country where a Swedish missionery ruled with a rod of iron, but the only thing he was interested in doing was spreading his creed with virtually no efforts to teach people about hygiene or help them improve their lot.  A significant fact is that among his flock a large number of children died of cholera with no attempt on his part to teach the parents, particularly the mothers, how to avoid such diseases.  VOLVO trucks abound.  Why? Because the Swedish church representatives have the exclusive on importing them to the country.

In economic terms Bolivia would seem to be divided into two separate economies.  A primary teacher (one of the worst paid professionals in Bolivia) earns between 175 and 300Bs. a month (US$65) depending on years of service, a maid earns between 200-300Bs. plus her keep if she lives in, other salaries are around 500Bs. and an engineer might earn about 1,000Bs. (US$250).  The Prefecto of La Paz, the most important prefecture in the country, told Robert that he earned 1,200Bs. a month, his technical personnel earn 500 and secretaries earn 180, so, he said, I am in no position to demand efficiency and no corruption from my staff when I know that what they earn is insufficient. Food, especially fruit, is cheap: a pineapple costs 1B. (25 US cents), but, as far as I can see, everything else is expensive. So, how do people manage?  I have not managed to answer that question. The only response I can think of is that they don't.  The Trade Unions claim that the cost of a family shopping basket for one month is 1,850 Bs. and they are pressing for wage increases so that people can meet their basic needs.  If their calculations are correct, then there are a lot of people living below the breadline. I think the dichotomy is pretty well summed up in the bathroom of the house in Cochabamba: the bathtub has massage nozzles and jets of every description (which I never found out how to use) and yet the water coming out of the taps has to be boiled before consumption.

Teachers are on strike with over a hundred on hunger strike to force the government to do something about their salaries.  The government wants to reform the education system (and it needs it), but the teachers say no amount of reform will do any good if they are not adequately rewarded for their work.  The other day there was a demonstration of former casino workers demanding that the casinos be re-opened.  I don't know when or why they were closed.

On the other hand there are large Japanese and American 4 wheel drive vehicles everywhere, certain people have telephones and faxes and TVs and wear fashionable clothes.  Anything you want you can find - household appliances, electrical goods etc - but all at European prices. What do these people do and where do they earn their money?  One answer might be that people who run import businesses make money, or people who have their own business of whatever kind.  These people work in dollars, so they don't lose on inflation.  In any case, the economy is dichotomous and I still cannot reconcile the prices with what people are supposed to be earning.  A lot of it is said to be drug-related earnings.

The exchange rate was 4.45 bolivianos to the US dollar when we arrived and now it is 4.71.  The currency is grossly over-valued, it seems to me.  Virtually the  only foreign currency you can change (and that you can do on any street corner) is the US dollar.  Pounds Sterling are a non-starter: there is only one place in the whole of Cochabamba where you can change them and they give you nearly the same rate as for the dollar - 5Bs. instead of 4.5 - so you make a great loss in such transactions, and pesetas are absolutely out.

One of the main reasons, it seems logical to assume, why things are so expensive is that Bolivia makes virtually nothing.  Apart from raw materials, such as tin (the bottom dropped out of the market in the 70s), antimony, oil and natural gas (which is sold to Argentina and Brazil - a new contract has just been signed by the President to sell the gas at give-away prices), and forestry products (unfortunately), they sell almost nothing else. There is an explosives industry (fundamental if you have all these coups taking place all the time and as we learned to our horror at Christmas and New Year when there were fireworks exploding all night long), milk processing (the milk is excellent, just like it used to be with proper cream and everything), and not much else that I have been able to discover so far.  Everything is imported. The industrial and commercial power house of the area is undoubtedly Brazil: towels, bedlinen, crockery, pots and pans, fridges, toilet furniture, foodstuffs, cleaning materials, you name it, everything comes from Brazil.  Apart from that, the main supplier of such goods is the US, but these are more expensive.  Electronic goods come from either the US or Japan. Chile is beginning to increase its trade because bilateral relations between the two countries are improving.  The other strong economy is Argentina but, although Bolivia has a border with Argentina, they do not look in that direction and there is very little trade.

The Japanese, who have a strong presence  in the Santa Cruz region, have got the market sewn up when it comes to cars: Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi, and on a more modest level Suzuki, rule the roost.  A close second comes the US represented by Ford and Chevrolet.  There are some Volkswagens made in Brazil, but not so many.  The odd Renault (very odd) and no, but no Citroens or Peugeots.  British cars none at all, except the very exceptional Range Rover.  The cars here need to be very sturdy because outside the towns most of the roads are dirt roads tending towards rocky river beds. Land Rovers, we are told, are imported by the son of the British ambassador, but he must be a rotten businessman because you cannot buy them anywhere.  The reason we know that he imports them is that Robert was at the airport one day and a lady came along driving a Land Rover, so he went up to her and asked her where she got it.  She turned out to be the wife of the ambassador and told him that her son imported them.

At first the traffic was a complete mystery, but I soon realized that it was very simple.  There is no need for indicators, lights or any other accessory in your car, except the horn.  There are no lines on the roads and no traffic lights or give way signs or any such superfluous nonsense. As you approach a junction, you toot your horn and the person who toots first crosses the junction first - dead simple!  However, you need eyes on the back, front, sides and top of your head, because at night cyclists and motor-cyclists ride around with no lights, and outside the town dogs, sheep, cows, ducks, pigs, chickens and anything that may feel like it lie down in the middle of the road to sleep.  It must be said, however, that the animals respond very well to the horn!

Public transport between towns is the domain of the "flota" whilst urban transport is done by "micros".  However, there are other kinds of transport which seem to me to be an excellent idea:  there are "trufis" which are minivans that carry a small number of passengers on a fixed route and "trufi taxis", cars which work on the same principle but carry fewer passengers.  They are cheap, frequent and efficient and I think many places could adopt a similar system.  The trufis are privately owned and, I suppose, have a licence to ply a particular route.

Retailing, as would seem natural, is not very advanced.  There are some supermarkets, but small, and no hypermarkets.  Mostly you find small shops which sell the essentials.  Then there are the open and covered markets and street vendors who will sell you almost anything.  There are some shopping centres with a number of small shops but these are pretty exclusive and would seem to be for the yuppy population.

Hygiene is a difficult task for the majority of the population.  There are schemes to provide water and sanitation but, for the most part, this is lacking.  All water must be boiled before use, particularly during the rainy season, but many of the families that live on the street can only drink from the fountains.  As a result illness is rife.  50% of deaths are children under the age of 5 and the primary cause of death is diarrhoea. Second are respiratory diseases and third polio and other children's illnesses.  Another fairly indicative scene I saw reminded me of the American western films where the quacks sell medicine in the street.  At the open market there was a great throng surrounding a man who was extolling the benefits of his potions and explaining the dire consequences for the target - worming remedies.

The population must be at least 70% indigenous and most of the rest mestizo.  There is a very small ethnic European community who, of course, are the dominant class.  In general the people are not handsome as the Brazilians are handsome,  Some of the indigenous women have quite beautiful facial features and when they smile their faces light up, but they are careworn as a rule.  When they are young the indigenous women have a very upright carriage but, as they get older and carry children and heavy loads on their back, they get increasingly bent.  Where in Brazil even fat people move with grace, here the people do not: the gait of the indigenousAndrean peoples is fairly stiff and since the rest of the population is a mixture I suppose they inherited the gait too.  The Europeans are pretty graceless at the best of times so .... What people do have, especially the indigenous people, is magnificent thick hair!

The people are peaceful, courteous and quiet, they speak in low tones (inherited from the Quechua speakers, I think, who are very soft-spoken) and are generally amenable.  On the whole they have no drive, but this may be due to the fact, as someone suggested to me, that there are no incentives in society to make an effort because they don't seem to get anywhere. With so many military coups in the past there was no incentive for national or foreign investors to set up businesses, so employment opportunities are scarce and poorly remunerated.  However, they do seem to be steady workers, even if they don't "knock their pan out" working.  And why should they if they get paid so poorly?  However, people do make an effort to get work.  A fellow who has a qualification in rural development went to the Chapare to see if Robert could give him a job: this involved taking a bus from Quillacollo to Cochabamba (a relatively short journey) and another bus from Cochabamba to Chimoré which, by bus, is an 8-10 hour journey depending on the state of the "road"!

With such a high percentage of indigenous population, similar to Guatemala, one of the first things which struck me was that there is virtually no sign of  crafts anywhere.  Whereas in Guatemala there was an awareness, even among the upper classes, of the treasure their country had in terms of indigenous culture, here this does not seem to exist.  The awayu or cloth which the Indian women use to carry babies and goods on their back is brought from their home villages and I have yet to see any place where it can be bought.  I have been told that there is one shop in Cochabamba where they sell some, but I have yet to find it.  Alpaca wool is certainly appreciated abroad but here the only people who seem to value it are precisely foreign traders who sell alpaca sweaters at inflated prices.  I have found one shop in the centre run by a Bolivian where prices are more reasonable but there is no general awareness of what the country has to offer and most certainly no attempts to promote it.

Again a newspaper article may give us the clue by bringing us back to the ubiquitous churches.  Apparently over the past 20 years the policy of these organizations has been to devalue indigenous culture.  This can only be part of the explanation, because in Guatemala there are plenty of such churches too and yet there is a strong awareness of the value of indigenous culture.  Perhaps the difference lies in that in Guatemala the upper classes see the cultural (and commercial) value of their heritage, and here people do not.  All American (and unfortunately Middle American) aesthetics rule O.K? - plastic doilies and all!

These are simply first impressions which may be modified as time goes by, but I think it does no harm to record one's first reaction as a kind of control.

Some weeks ago Robert committed the cardinal sin of eating a piece of fruit withour peeling it and within 10 minutes was struck down with an almighty attack of Moctezuma.  Three days later he was so weak he could hardly move.  A group of doctors from the World Health Organization (whom he was suppoed to be conducting around) ended up having to visit him instead.  Although he had been drinking fluid he had electrolytic deficiency due to the loss of sodium but mainly potassium salts and had to have oral rehydration therapy.  He lost a fair amount of weight but is fine now.

Our boxes arrived on January 21st.  I use the term boxes advisedly, because about half the contents were missing.  I was on my own because Robert was at a meeting which lasted all day and he did not get home till nearly 10p.m.  Before the boxes came the transport company called to warn me that at least 2 of the them looked as if they had been opened and I should check them at once.

When I started to unpack I realised immediately that the boxes were half empty, so I started to check against the inventory.  It wasn't really necessary, because every single item of value, from the computer to the Irish linen tea towels, including the brand new video camera and my flute, had  disappeared in a meticulous sacking operation.  All the decent clothes have gone too, so I think we can safely say that we are "back to basics".  Since then I have been running around like an idiot trying to get all the documentation for the insurance claim.  The Lloyds representative came the following Monday and the eventually everything was sent to Vienna along with all the other documents.  So far we have heard nothing more.

At first we thought the robbery had taken place in the La Paz customs and the Minister of the Interior was all ready to start an investigation there.  However, my own research revealed that when the stuff reached La Paz it was already 60Kgs. short. The first thing everyone asked was whether the shipment came through Lima which is apparently a notorious black spot.  It did, and what is more it reached Lima on December 6th and sat there till December 29th., so they had more than ample time to check through everything and then reseal the boxes.  That is the worst of these cardboard things: there is a lot to be said for the old tea chest!

Of course, we were upset and disappointed, particularly Robert, but, in a way, I can understand it.  Here are these people earning a pittance and all these items which they could either use or sell pass under their noses every day.  It's understandable.

ENVIRONS

2005-09-06T16:01:00.000+02:00

ENVIRONS

15.01.1994

Anywhere you want to go out of Cochabamba involves climbing one of the hills which form the bowl in which the town lies.  The road to the Chapare climbs to the east and reaches a height of about 4,000m.  Once you leave the town behind there is a series of little settlements, Sacaba, Coyumi etc., strung out along the roadside.  These are virtually 100% indigenous.

The houses are made of adobe bricks which the people make and dry in the sun.  Some of the more prosperous dwellers have brick houses but these are scarce.  The traditional roof is also made of adobe or in some cases thatched, but this is tending to give way to corrugated asbestos or tin sheeting or, in the more prosperous houses, tiles.  As in Castile in central Spain, the houses are mostly left as they are which makes for a fairly drab urban landscape, if we can call it that.  The front wall of some houses is plastered and coloured but the remaining walls are left. I feel that a coat of lime would be an asset, not only from the aesthetic point of view, but because the quicklime would kill of many of the insects and other things which must live in the walls and roofs and which are one of the main methods of transmission of Chagas disease. Many houses have an adobe wall surrounding the yard or garden.

There is seldom any paving in front of or between the houses.  This is where the domestic animals roam - cows, pigs, sheep, chickens, turkeys, ducks etc. - and the women and children spend their time tending them and trying to prevent them from wandering on to the road. People wash both themselves and their clothes in the nearby streams and nearly all activity takes place in the open.  Most houses are open and people wander in and out.

In some settlements there have been government schemes to provide tapped water or sanitary installations.  In the latter each house has a latrine which is whitewashed, and each latrine has a number - not the house, mind you - the latrine.

Something which attracts your attention as you go by is that many houses have a long bamboo pole sticking up with a white flag on the end.  This was quite intriguing and I did not know what it meant.  The nearest thing I could think of was that in northern Italy such white flags signify that the owner of that house sells cheese.  I wasn't so far off the mark.  Here it means that they sell chicha, the local alcoholic brew made from maize.  Sure enough, outside each of these houses there is a huge metal container, similar in shape to the ceramic ones used in Andalucía to knead bread dough, and the women stir the contents endlessly over a charcoal fire.  When the brew is ready, the liquid is strained off into a bucket and the corn cobs are thrown away.  What the process is after this stage I don't know, although I would assume that it is left to ferment.  There are lots of tables and chairs, frequently under an awning, where people congregate to eat and drink.  How anyone can drink alcohol at this altitude beats me.  I bought a bottle of Chilean wine the first week-end we were here, but it seems to rise to the top of your skull and press down on it.  Needless to say, after that experience we have not had any more alcohol.

There are also some villages to be seen some distance away from the road and I think they look considerably more attractive, because the houses are surrounded by cultivated fields.

As you climb, the air becomes cooler and soon there is a fine drizzle.  It is not really rain.  You are simply in the midst of the clouds and the moisture is being carried by the clouds.  There is a huge reservoir up there which supplies Cochabamba's water. Near the reservoir there is a hotel set in 250 hectares with cabins which you can rent. The manager of the hotel turned out to be from Lisbon, so we had a nice chat with him.  The hotel restaurant does a roaring trade at weekends when the middle classes from Cochabamba come out for Sunday lunch.

We have been up there a few times because, so far, amazing as it may seem in a country which is so depopulated, this is the only place we have found to be able to walk and let the dogs run free. There is a path right the way round the whole reservoir.  We have as yet only been about a quarter of the way round.  There are green meadows sloping gently down to the water's edge with cattle grazing on them, which are very reminiscent of lakesides in Scotland.  The vegetation is mainly pines and there are loads of wild mushrooms and toadstools growing everywhere.  One day when we were there it started to rain, although it was not cold, and I was amazed to find when we got back home that my face was totally sunburnt!

One day Robert said he would take me a little further along that road to the beginning of the tropical area.  From the hotel the road begins to drop down again and in no time the vegetation starts to change: tall palms, hardwood trees, Swiss cheese plants with GINORMOUS leaves, castor oil plants - all the things people cultivate in Europe but with the hugest leaves you can imagine.  The temperature begins to rise and the characteristic smell of decomposing vegetation assails your nostrils. This is the cloud forest.  It reminded me of the jungle at Tikal in the Guatemalan Yucatán Peninsula and I cannot wait to get back!

So, within an hour and a half's drive from Cochabamba you have a Mediterranean climate, a high altitude temperate climate and tropical cloud forest! Also along that road there is a grave by the roadside (there are lots of them) which is where Vicente Hervas, one of the peasant leaders, was shot by the security forces.  Depending on how many flowers are on it is an indication of how the coca trade is going.  The day we passed it seemed to be flourishing.

COCHABAMBA

2005-09-05T09:46:00.000+02:00

COCHABAMBA

03.01.1994

Our arrival in Cochabamba was a bit fraught.  After an early start at 4.30a.m. (up even before the birds!) we caught the 8a.m. plane.  As the flight is a mere 35 minute hop, the dogs were out of their boxes before they knew they were in them.  That was not the problem.  Having had no breakfast, everyone was starving, but the political head of the project (appointed 6 months ago) based in La Paz was over-nervous about the project (because it was such a disaster) and he had arranged for all kinds of meetings.  All day long people were coming and going, with the result that, although some of the other people managed to escape for a while, Robert was trapped and had to meet them all.  By 6p.m. he told them all to go away, that he had just arrived and could not solve their 4 year old problems in one day.  When he had had time to evaluate the situation he would be in a position to discuss these matters with them.  O's original plan was that everyone should head down to the project area that same evening (a 4-5 hour drive on a dreadful road) while he remained in Cochabamba to meet the Minister of the Interior who was arriving to inaugurate this new stage of the project the next day.  Robert told him that he would also stay over in Cochabamba that night, so, as I had (with considerable difficulty) managed to find a hotel which would take me and my dogs, we headed off for there and had a good night's rest. The project head had wqashed nhis hands of my welfare right from the very start.

The following day Robert set off for the Chapare and I remained behind in Cochabamba until he had a chance to evaluate the situation down there.

Cochabamba sprawls out in a wide valley surrounded by gentle hills.  It is built mainly on a grid system and the hotel where I was staying (Hotel Diplomat) is on one of the main arteries, called the Paseo del Prado.  This is a wide avenue with a central garden strip and plenty of trees.  In general in the town there are plenty of trees and little squares which meant that finding a place to walk the dogs was not too difficult.  Our first impression is that it is an agreeable place. There are not too many tall buildings and most of the houses are low with a little garden in front or behind.

On one of the hills which form the bowl in which the town lies there is a statue of Christ like the ones in Rio and Lisbon, except that the Cochabambinos (as the people of Cochabamba are called) wanted theirs to be bigger, so it is 12 cm. taller than the others.

According to the radio, Cochabamba is the town where people eat the most in Bolivia.  On average they consume 1,500g/day whereas in El Alto, a 100% indigenous settlement near La Paz airport, the average is 1,068g/day. ( In rural areas it is much, much less than that). I have to confirm that the portions served in restaurants are enormous.  Apparently people have coffee first thing.  Then at 10.30 they go out for a plate of something. Around 12.00 the lunch break begins until 2.  At 6 offices etc. close and shortly afterwards people have dinner.  Life in Cochabamba seems to revolve around eating.  On Sundays the main restaurants and hotels announce their menu in the newspaper so people can choose where to eat out that day.

The social structure is apparently fairly homogeneous (at a certain level, of course).  The mind-set apparently is that no individual or clan should get too prosperous or big for their boots.  If they should show signs of doing so, the remaining groups converge in a concerted effort to prevent this.  From what I have seen so far, society seems to be more homogeneous that in La Paz.  All these remarks must be considered within the context that the indigenous population is grossly marginalized and under-privileged. I think you could say that they are also fairly homogeneously poor.  If I were an indigenous person here I think I would be leading an uprising like the one in Chiapas in Mexico.

The indigenous population in Cochabamba is mostly Quechua.  One group of women wear mainly brown skirts (polleras) and shawls.  Both men and women wear a conical felt hat with a narrow upturned brim.  They are very poor indeed.  Another group wears more colourful clothing and they seem to be less poor than this first group.  I have yet to learn the ethnic differences.  Many of these people have come to the city in search of work: many of the men work carrying people's shopping for them or carrying loads in the market and the women have no option other than to sit in the streets and beg or sell whatever they can. Since I wrote that originally I have discovered that the really wretchedly poor people wearing the brown clothes are people who have come from Potosí, the centre where first silver was mined in colonial times, and later tin was of more importance.  In 1972 when the price of tin collapsed on the world market thousands of people were left without a job and had to emigrate.  Then in 1985 the government of the day "rationalized" the tin mining industry making thousands unemployed. At first people were very generous to them but too many years have gone by and now not only the original people are beggars but also the next generations and there are no prospects for them.

Searching for a place to eat, I came across a vegetarian restaurant called GOPAL.  It is cheap (you can eat as much as you want for 6 bolivianos which is about US$1.50) and many students eat there.  You can also pay a monthly fee which entitles you to have all your meals there and that works out cheaper. I made friends with a young boy called David who works there.  He was fascinated by the dogs which is how our conversation started. He is Quechua and was born in Tarija in the south of the country, but was brought by his parents to Cochabamba when he was a baby.  He is the youngest of 12 children, the others are all married. His parents live in Santa Cruz now (that is the main development area) where his father deals in cattle.  As he was not in agreement with this he left home and fends for himself.  He lives and works in the restaurant.  Many indigenous families come to the restaurant after it finishes serving with their little tin pots and they are given the food that has not been sold.

He did not go to school as a child because, although education is free, the family must buy the school books and materials, which his family could not afford to do.  A further complication is that at day school children must wear a uniform, which must be clean and pressed.  This is not so easy when you have no water or facilities.  Now that he is earning a basic living, he goes to night school and is finishing his primary education.

After lunch he brought me some coca leaves and explained that for his people these leaves were a treasure, because, when they chew them, their fatigue and hunger are alleviated.  The indigenous people also use them to foretell the future.  They take a handful of leaves and, depending on how they fall to the ground, they are interpreted. "When the Spaniards came to rob our lands", he said, "they came in search of gold, but they did not recognize our gold which is the coca leaf, because the leaf was damaging to them whereas for us Quechuas it brings us nothing but good: it is a gift from our gods".

The same sentiment is reflected in a legend noted by Antonio Díaz Villamil about the encounter between America and Western culture:  "And when the white man wants to do as you do and dares to use these leaves as you do, they will have the opposite effect.  Their sap, which for you is your life force, for your overlords will be a repugnant and degenerating vice.  While for you Indians it is a spiritual good, it will cause idiocy and madness in them"  (La Leyenda de la Coca) - prophetic words indeed!

Someone was supposed to be contacting me at the hotel to help me find a house to rent in Cochabamba.  However, since nobody materialized, on Saturday when Robert came back from the Chapare we bought the newspaper and set out to find something ourselves.  We eventually found a 3 bedroomed house with a little garden for the dogs (about the size of the grass patch around our house) in the San Pedro area of the town - just under the great statue.  The lady was asking for US$700 but Robert managed to get her down to US$400 and negotiated for her to install a washing machine.  This she has still to do.  The important thing is that the house has a phone.  In fact, at the beginning the phone was really the landlady's office fax number but she has paid and signed for a new phone for us, which they put in on Friday Jan. 8th. We are insisting that she has the phone classified so that we can make international calls direct because normally people do not have that facility and you have to go through the operator.  She seems to think that having to do that will make sure that people pay for their calls but we pointed out that we could just as well make calls through the operator and not pay for them.  Apparently 2 evangelical missionaries went off leaving a US$1,000 phone bill unpaid.  Robert told her she should never trust missionaries and that in the bible it says that faith without good works is useless, and he would rather have the good works!

We had found another larger house which we had bargained down from US$900 to 500, but we decided not to take it, because it was more than we wanted to pay, it was too big to clean from my point of view and the garden had been slabbed over.  As you can see, rents are not cheap.  This, I think, is due to the fact that there are a host of UN and US agencies here which gives rise to the same phenomenon which occurred in Puerto de Santa María when General Motors moved in - the rents soar.  Apparently Robert's predecessor was paying US$1,900 per month!  Apart from the fact that we could not afford that, even if we could, I think it is immoral. Our neighbour round the corner is the head of the American Drug Enforcement Agency and he has an armed guard on his door 24 hours a day even, like now, when he is not here.

The landlady runs a balanced food business which is next door to her house.  She was married to one of the directors of the Banco de Santa Cruz, but he was a womanizer and after 18 years of marriage she decided to get out.  She went to Central America for 2 years and then came back.  Her husband had divorced her by then and married his erstwhile girlfriend.  He now has another 18 year old girlfriend apparently.  She then adopted two children, a boy and a girl, and, poor woman, they both turned out to be mentally deficient.  The girl is 14 now with severe behavioural problems and the boy 13.  She was going to adopt another little 3 year old now.  The mother died a week or so ago and the father cannot look after the children (there are 6 of them) and work at the same time, and the rest of his family is too poor to take on any more obligations.  However, the father did not want the three sisters, one aged 11, another 9 and the small one 3, to be split up, so she was considering fostering them, although she thought that three was a big handful to take on.  In the end the poor man decided that he was going to try and keep the family together.

A rented house here, it turns out, only has the bare essentials of furniture.  There are no pots and pans, dishes, cutlery or anything else.  This meant that I had to go out and buy at least the basics to get by.  The only ones who had all their utensils were the dogs. If I had known that I would have brought a lot more things.  The landlady took me to the big open market, called La Cancha, which functions every day except Sundays.  They sell everything there, clothes, shoes, sheets, towels, food, cleaning implements, crockery, etc etc.  It is a huge place.  So I was able to get the things I needed to be going on with.

I had just finished and was coming out when I had my first bad experience: a fellow came up on my right and pulled my chain off my neck.  I was really upset, not because of the chain which, after all is only money, but because the pendant is the one I had made with my father's signet ring.  If I had known that she was going to take me to the market I would not have worn it, but it was too late.  As the fellow approached I could see him out of the corner of my eye and I thought there was something odd about him, so I stopped to let him pass in front of me.  However, he stepped around behind me and that was that.  The people in the market told me he was known as "El Chino".  The next two mornings were spent at the police station, but so far no luck, despite the fact that I was able to tell them who they were supposed to be looking for.  I keep going back just to let them see that I am not giving up although I don't really hold out much hope.  I have to go back again on Wednesday at 5.30.  Now I am going into jeweller shops and asking them to phone me if anyone comes in trying to sell them the pendant.  You never know.

We have taken this house for a variety of reasons.  The first is that Cochabamba can provide all the services, such as mail, telephone etc. which we might need and the electricity supply is more constant than in the Chapare, at least during the rainy season, so that I should be able to do my translations here. However, this short experience of town living is enough to confirm my suspicion that I am not a townie - too many people, too much noise, and a plethora of dogs which bark at anything and everything because they have nothing better to do.  Each house here has a minimum of two dogs which are never taken out, so, I imagine, are bored stiff and their only diversion is to bark at passers-by, whether human or canine.

From that point of view Robert also prefers the jungle area where the project is, so long as it is raining because, when it is not, all the cars, which people drive like demons possessed, raise an infernal amount of dust.  Another reason for taking a house here is that everyone warned us against taking the dogs to the Chapare, saying that they would be dead within 2 months because a "worm" would get into their feet and kill them. However, I went to the Post Office and looked up the vets in the town.  Quite by chance the one I contacted was a girl who had got a grant to study at the University of Liège and then did research into rabies at the Pasteur Institute.  She told me that the infections the dogs were likely to pick up down there were the same as here (and Andalucía) except that, due to the high humidity, there was a risk of fungi (for both humans and animals) and she told me that the only precaution was to dry the dogs' paws and, if necessary, to wash them with sulphur soap which has a drying effect.  She also sold the same dog food they were used to getting (Pedigree Chum, here called Champ, made in Brazil), so armed with my dog food and sulphur soap I am ready to face the jungle - and the sooner the better as far as I am concerned.  However, until such times as I have the infrastructure set up here (mail box, telephone, fax etc) I shall stay put.

In Cochabamba lots of people ride bicycles.  This is proving to be a problem because Simon seems to be suffering from the same problem the Indians had when the Spaniards arrived in America riding horses.  He cannot understand why these people have wheels instead of legs and he does not like it at all.  Fortunately, he has not bothered about other differences such as women wearing bowler hats and so on.

Our things were supposed to arrive on December 7th but they did not turn up in La Paz until December 31st.  Since the Ministries did not go back to work until January 7th, we could not get our tax-free certificate without which they could not be cleared through customs.

January 22nd.  Our boxes arrived.  I say our boxes advisedly, because about half the contents did not.  Almost every single item of value, from the computer to my Irish linen tea towels, had been removed in a meticulous operation. The sole exception was the laser printer, because that was in a box of its own and presumably it would have been too obvious to hand over a consignment of goods one box short. In all, goods to the value of about US$11,000 have disappeared.  The Minister of the Interior was instigating an investigation to see what had happened, but from the customs weigh-in certificates it is clear that this happened even before the stuff reached La Paz.  It seems that the shipment was routed through Lima which, apparently, is a notorious black spot for "pilferage".  We are (or rather I am, because Robert is in the Chapare) now in the throws of making an insurance claim and I can only hope that Lloyds of London don't put up any resistance and also that they don't take for ever, because I now have hardly any clothes.  Before January 22nd. I had 2 skirts, 2 blouses and 1 dress, but I was confident that other things would soon be arriving.  Now, however, .......

The dogs are quite happy and have suffered no stress whatever.  They do not get their long walks because as yet I have not found a place to take them, but I hope that when we get down to the Chapare there will be places to let them run in safety.  I was hoping to go down there next week, but with all this insurance business I may have to stay here.

UNESCO , I have to say, have come up trumps.  They sent me a short translation just to try out the system.  I have just returned it to them.  I sent 2 copies, one by ordinary mail and another by urgent mail, so that we can see the difference between the two methods. I am now waiting for a second text which is to come by mail this time.  I hope it comes soon, because it has to be back in Paris by the end of this month.

OUTWARD OR UPWARD BO

2005-09-04T12:37:00.000+02:00

OUTWARD (OR UPWARD) BOUND

On December 10th. 1993 we were counting on Simon (our new 9 and a half month old bearded collie - like Sally only greyish) getting us up at 6.30 as usual, but, lo and behold!, he slept in that morning and so did we.  Fortunately, Bob, the friend who is staying in our house while we are away and had stayed over that night, got up at 7 so we did not miss our plane.  At 8.30 we gave the dogs their tranquilizers as prescribed and the caravan, composed of Maggie and Tim (our neighbours), Bob and us set off.  We collected Lois (a Canadian friend) in Estepona and headed for the airport.  Within 30 minutes the dogs were completely groggy, and by the time we reached the airport they were both legless, but still conscious.  We checked in and an hour before departure we checked the dogs through.  They did not bat an eyelid as they were taken away.

The 50 minute flight to Madrid was fine except that we were worried about how the animals would be faring.  No need to worry.  A special truck came to take them off the plane and they were waiting for us in the baggage hall when we got there.  They were overjoyed to see us, of course, but not the slightest bit perturbed.  This was a relief to us since it augured well for the rest of the journey.

We had deliberately arranged to have a long wait in Madrid to give the animals time to get over their first sensation of being shut in before confronting the long overnight haul to Rio.  Being in airports is like being in a large department store: after a while you begin to feel disembodied.  The dogs were still very calm.  I called the vet and we decided to reduce the dosage.  Since it had taken effect so quickly in the morning, I decided to give them their second dose 3/4 - 1 hour rather than 2 hours  before check-in.  When I had given them the pills every passer-by in the airport wanted to talk to them with the result that by 10.45p.m. they were brighter than they had been all day and we had no option but to put them in their boxes.  However, they didn't protest as they went down the luggage conveyor.

The flight to Rio was 9 and a half hours’ long.  The plane was a DC10, so it was fairly noisy.  However, we took off our shoes and covered our eyes  with eye masks and made valiant, though not too successful, efforts to sleep after Iberia's abortive effort at providing a vegetarian meal - half a plate of cucumber, some carrot and asparagus!

The plane entered Brazilian territory in the early hours of the morning and we flew over Brazil for about 4 and a half hours before reaching Rio, which gives you some idea of the immensity of the country.  There was some confusion over the time differential, but it turned out to be 3 hours from Spain and 2 hours from the U.K.

We arrived at Rio airport at 6.30 a.m. local time, and there was only one passport control wallah on duty.  Fortunately we were among the first off the plane and were at the head of the queue.  Two more appeared later.  That was pretty painless.

Now to recover the dogs in the baggage hall.  The conveyor started moving, but only cases appeared - no dogs.  I asked a young policeman where they could be located and was told that they would come out the door he was "guarding".  I waited.  No sign.  I asked him if he could go and find out what was happening.  He deferred to his companion who seemed to be his senior who just said, "Oh, they'll come.  Just wait here."  Since I was not prepared to wait, I insisted, and he simply took himself off to guard another door where there were no pushy women.  Robert then caught the Iberia representative and she went off to sort things out.  In a trice they appeared, anxious to get out of their boxes, delighted to see us, but none the worse for wear.

As I opened the doors and let them out (on their leads) a customs official announced in imperious tones that they could not tread Brazilian soil and must remain in their boxes.  So, we loaded the dogs on one trolley and the cases on another and proceeded through customs control, whereupon a lady official said we had to go to the Ministry of Agriculture representative to get a pass.  I thought Robert was going to hit her - but he didn't.  Since the vet had not arrived for work there was nothing for it but to wait, but I let the dogs out anyway and to hell with the customs official!

Having reached the end of his tether, Robert went off to remonstrate with the customs man.  He waved his U.N. passport at him and the response was amazing!  He came rushing over and told me that we should have said in the beginning that we had a diplomatic passport and urged me to take the dogs out walking, running, flying - any way I pleased.

However, by then the vet had arrived and I had given him our Spanish veterinary certificates.  When I told the customs man that he said, "Oh, what a pity! You could just have gone through". Nevertheless, it was fortunate that we did see the vet because he issued us with a certificate to be handed in on departure (which they asked for) and another to hand over to the Bolivian authorities on arrival (which nobody asked for and I have still got).

This episode is pretty indicative of Brazil, I think.  The people are gorgeous but the system is over-bureaucratic.  As a young Brazilian told us, "Here in Brazil we have the knack of making everything 100 times more complicated than necessary".

There were hundreds of people waiting to meet friends etc. in the reception area.  When they saw Simon it was like a mass reaction.  The crowd  surged forward exclaiming "Que bonitinho! Que beleza!"  The dogs were a real wow everywhere we went in Rio.

Fortunately the hotel was on the second floor of the airport terminal itself, so moving the boxes and luggage was pretty painless.  By the time we actually got to the hotel nearly 4 hours had passed since our arrival, so we fed the dogs, and after a magnificent Brazilian breakfast with gorgeous tropical fruit we all had a lie down to rest and let the stress ebb away.

By the afternoon we were feeling a lot better, so we decided to take a taxi and have a look at Rio.  The taxi driver turned out to be the son of a woman from Carmona in Sevilla.  He was a civil servant, but the pay is so bad ($200 a month) that he worked in a taxi cooperative in the evenings and at week-ends.

What an indescribably magnificent situation!  The natural bay is spectacular, the beaches white and glistening, the vegetation lush and green.  The Cariocas (the inhabitants of Rio) say that God spent six days making the world and the seventh he dedicated exclusively to Rio.  I think they are right.  We did a circuit from the airport through the commercial area to Copacabana, Ipanema, Leblon and Tijuca and back round the other way - a 2 hour drive.

The Maracanã stadium is impressive indeed.  By the beach there are 8 football fields for anyone who wants to play.  Everywhere there were children and teenagers playing football barefoot.  No wonder Brazil produces such terrific football players.

Despite all the dire warnings, nobody troubled us at all.  Labour costs must be low because the airport terminal was the cleanest place I have ever seen with squads of people cleaning endlessly.

The people are quite splendid - gentle, pleasant, courteous, talkative, soft-spoken and laid-back.  The lift operator (an old black man) sang me a song about a girl and her dogs when I was taking the dogs for a walk!  I must say that having spent such a long time studying Brazilian literature I  was a bit apprehensive about my first visit to the country.  Would I understand the accent and be able to make myself understood?  Would I be disappointed?  I have to say that after the initial set-to with the powers-that-be this brief encounter was a positive experience in every respect.

It was an early rise on Sunday 12th - 4.30 a.m.  After taking the dogs out, showering, paying the bill etc. we got to the departure lounge at 6 a.m.  I tried to give the dogs their pills, but Simon wasn't having any and I had to go back to the hotel to get something soft to disguise them.  By 7 a.m. they were pretty relaxed so we put them in their boxes and they were carried off - much nicer than being sent along a conveyor.

The flight from Rio was by far the most arduous leg of the journey, because the plane stops at São Paulo (a 1 hour hop and a 1 hour stop) and then continues on to Santa Cruz de la Sierra in eastern Bolivia.  Another 30 minute stop.  Then on to Cochabamba and the final 40 minute hop to La Paz.  The Varig personnel were great: Iberia staff should be sent over for a short course on preparing vegetarian meals.  What a feast!

São Paulo is an immense sprawling city in beautiful surroundings.  Santa Cruz seems fairly small, despite being the second city of Bolivia.  The surrounding terrain is flat and green and it was windy.  There would also seem to be a military base near the airport as there was a huge US military transport plane sitting there.

The altiplano is grey and drab-looking in contrast to the green we had seen before.  The plane hardly seemed to have come out of the clouds before it was landing.  There were lots of little plots walled off with adobe walls and adobe houses.  The more prosperous dwellers were adding brick-built upper floors.

With some trepidation we left the plane after all the stories of altitude sickness, called "soroche".  However, I must say we had no ill effects to speak of.  We made a conscious effort to walk slowly.  There is a notice in the airport to the effect that medical attention at the airport is free for anyone who might require it.

La Paz airport terminal looks like one of those colonial outposts you see in films about Africa in the 1930s or something.  None of the shining cleanliness of Rio.  The luggage conveyor is a wooden structure with an old, oft-mended rubber belt.  You are immediately aware that you are in the poorest country in South America and I knew for the first time the origin of the expression "a sinking feeling" - I could feel my heart sink right down to the soles of my feet.

I went straight up to an official-looking bod and asked him where the dogs would come through.  On the belt.  Impossible, (the belt is about 3 metres above ground level) I want to collect them.  You can't.  Why not?  Well, talk to the customs official - a woman.  It was finally arranged that, once we had collected our luggage, he (the original official bod) would send someone with us to fetch them.  You have to hire a porter (mostly indigenous men) to carry your things because there are no trolleys.  When we collected our stuff we went back to the chief official who was not in a mood for much work.  He couldn't send anyone now.  We would have to wait until everyone else had gone through customs and then .....  Nothing for it - out with the passport again!  So and so, take these "señores" to collect their dogs.  Hurry now!  Off we went.  Again, despite the stop-overs and 6 and a half hours’ journey, they were perky, delighted to see us, but not stressed.

A TOYOTA van from the UN was waiting which was big enough to carry all the luggage.  The La Paz representative, was arriving 10 minutes after us on a flight from Santa Cruz (We actually saw his plane take off after us), so we waited for him.

La Paz airport is at an altitude of 4,100m.  We drove (or rather catapulted) down to the centre which is at 3,600m. and then continued down to the Calacoto district, one of the 2 most exclusive residential areas, at 3,100m.  This was because the Calacoto Hotel was the only one which would accept the dogs.  Despite the exclusive nature of the district, the hotel was pretty tacky, but the people were nice and the area was quiet.

La Paz is surreal! It is situated in the most unlikely location - in a canyon surrounded by stark, bare hills.  Apparently the reason it was located here was that the canyon was relatively sheltered from the winds which blow on the altiplano and because the Spaniards found gold in the Choqueyapu River which crosses the city.  It was named La Paz to commemorate the end of the squabble between Pizarro and Almagro in Peru.

The La Paz representative, who is married to a grand-daughter of a former president of Bolivia  who was exiled in London where she was born, was worried about the project and anxious to speak to Robert straight away, so poor Robert only had time to change before he was spirited off again.

Two tea experts had arrived from Sri Lanka and Calcutta that same morning, so they went to their hotel in the city centre to talk.  Sarath Tissa Gunatilleke, the man from Sri Lanka, got palpitations and his blood pressure dropped.  The doctor had to be called and he was sent to bed to rest.  The other man, Dilip Mukherjee, whose wife is a Banerjee and is probably related to Mr. Banerjee! (an old Indian friend of ours), studied mechanical engineering in Belfast before specializing in tea processing, so the two engineers had a high old time slagging the English. Filippo Gotti, an Italian agronomist who spent a year in Bolivia a couple of years ago on an Italian aid project, is in charge of the agricultural side.  Robert liked the team.

I stayed at the hotel with the dogs and rested.  You can feel your body gradually adapting to the altitude: it takes less effort to do things as the day goes by.  The main symptom which I found was that, when climbing stairs, my thigh muscles were kind of cramped, due, I imagine, to the thinness of the air and lack of oxygen.  When Robert came back about 8p.m. we went to the nearest eating place - the Tasca Vasca (if you please) - and filled an empty spot.

After that we watched an interview on TV with the President of Bolivia, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada.  He has been in office for 4 months.  Apparently when he put forward his candidature there were many protests because people (the European population) complained that he didn't speak good Spanish: he has a strong US accent for some reason I haven't sussed out yet.  However, he said that over 70% of the population of Bolivia speak Spanish as a second language, so in that respect he was more representative than others.  He seemed to have the right ideas - education (including bilingual education in the mother tongue) and job creation by capitalizing companies. Since then I have discovered that he is totally ineffectual, dances to the tune called by the US embassy and has neo-liberal economic ideas which are disastrous for a country such as this one.

The next day when Robert went off to a series of meetings with various people I set out to find a place to buy some things and came across a shopping centre called Centro Comercial San Miguel. It was a mixture of posh shops where you could buy the latest of anything, including Benetton and computer accessories, and indigenous women selling fruit and everything under the sun from their baskets on the pavement.  The women wear long wide skirts with an apron on top, a bowler hat on their heads and a colourful shawl of beautiful woven fabric which they use to carry their babies or their wares - or both - on their backs.  They have long, luxuriant jet-black hair worn in 2 plaits with tassels plaited in at the ends.

The weather at La Paz is interesting.  In the morning and late afternoon a strong tropical sun shines and it is hot in the sun.  However, in the shade it is cool: apparently the difference in temperature between sun and shade can be about 15ºC.  At midday it clouds over and at night the temperature drops considerably.  It often rains at night at this time of year (southern hemisphere summer), frequently with a thunder storm, and in the morning the air is fresh and cool and clean.  On the altiplano the night temperature can be -20ºC.  I am told that the main temperature difference is between night and day and sun and shade rather than between winter and summer.

Catching up on lost time

2005-09-04T11:13:00.000+02:00

This diary has been under wraps for ten years now. Maybe it is time to give it an airing.