Sunday, March 04, 2007
Stepping outside for Mario and ruinas
The weekends in La Paz are quiet, and those that occur during the rainy season are rather wet. The streets are dramatically empty, storefronts closed, and you are forced to look at the hanging laundry beside homes longingly, knowing that it will never dry (even when it is yours...unfortunately). Lucky for me, I had a relatively eventful weekend.
Bailen and Fabrizio have showed me that Super Mario Brothers 2 has not gotten any easier for me, since I tried my hand at it before...right after it´s inception...in 1988. But, it´s a lot more fun to play when it is with them. I can hear them shouting out commands to one another, shouting them out to me, calling to Mario, Luigi, the Princess, or Toad (pronounced toe-add, in this case), and then suddenly, out of no where, they will scream, ¨GAME OVER¨ in English. Or, ¨BONUS!¨. It´s hysterical. They have no idea what any of that means, but they know where the secret doors are and what the special stars do. They even told me that I wasn´t that good at the game...compared to them. But, I don´t mind. I like them, and the game, so much that I have started to even get used to their shouting to each other about the game right outside my door while I am trying to sleep-in on any morning.
I gave them some extra copies of the worksheets that I made for the kids in my casita, and they got really excited. I told them that we would have art time at nights, because they seem to really love it (and that seems like the best use of the supplies that I brought from the States...now that I have been told that the kids I am now working with cannot really use much of it). I laugh with them often, and read them stories about pigs and Madagascar on the occasional night time. They even wanted to watch my old favorite, ¨Buscando al Nemo¨(Finding Nemo). These kids are a lot of fun, and I remain glad to be living with their family.
Yesterday morning, I went on my first real outing into the countryside of Bolivia. Joining Chris, Fiona, and Katherine (another volunteer), we hopped on a mini-bus, lugging us through the bustling streets of a crowded marketplace. From the window, I watched traditionally dressed women sit on the curb, outstretching their arms to display the seeds and grains they had for sale in burlap bags beside them. I noticed kids playing in and around huge plastic shoe piles on the edge of tarp-roofed stalls. And, I watched men and women stand beside their stalls, overflowing with overflowing piles of silver pots or panty hose or even fruit, wondering who is purchasing all of these goods. The Bolivians seem to be wandering aimlessly, from stall to stall. Interestingly enough, the market seems to be divided by types of goods; all alike things are grouped together---the pots and pans, electronics, food, and so on.
We passed over hills and went straight through the market to a bustling square, where we met up with another mini-bus. This one was headed out of town; we were on the way to Tiwanaku, the site of ruins from the eldest civilization of Bolivia (pre-Inca). This mini-bus was much more crowded, including loads of people who felt like were nearly spilled out of the windows and doors. I sat on an inside seat, next to Katherine, and hugging the foggy windows (it was obviously raining outside, causing condensation on the windows). Men and women in traditional dress, modern dress, carrying mantas full of goods, briefcases, and newspapers alike hopped on the mini-bus endlessly; the bus went through La Paz and up to El Alto.
Finally, in El Alto, we set off. In what felt like just a few moments, we were in the middle of the countryside, with rolling hills and Andean peaks, lined with plush greenery and grazing cattle and sheep. Stopping at a checkpoint (which are distributed among the Bolivian and Peruvian borders---and I would imagine any other country dealing with a drug trade), I was amazed to find 5 women who had been loitering shamelessly approached us, and shouted at the windows about the goods they carried. People inside the mini-bus bargained from their seats about prices for bread and chicken livers, and eventually made purchases, which got passed over and around me. We then drove and drove, with the random stop in the middle of a field or beside a straw-roofed home with clay walls for a random passenger or two to climb off the bus, fetch the goods they had strapped to the roof, and continue on.
After an hour and a half, the mini-bus pulled up to a museum in the middle of the Andes. He told us that this was Tiwanaku.
It was. Alas, we spent the next few hours wandering through the museum and the massive complex of outdoor ruins, reading ¨Lonely Planet¨ for explanations in English about what we were seeing. Many red, grey, and yellow stones, all carved with an indigenous brilliance. I tried really hard to get into it...alas, while I enjoyed the outing and I really love being within the depths of the countryside and mountains (as opposed to city and mountains), I do not think that I am much of one for ruins. I am pretty sure that my father would be disappointed to hear (or read) my admitting this. I mean, they are stones. Sure, the carvings are really interesting and it is good to see...but, they are stones. Old stones. Sorry.
I spent the remainder of the weekend exploring museums (including the highly recommended National Museum of Art), plazas, and parks that I had not yet found in the city. Time seems to be going fast, and I feel like I am really getting a grasp on what this city has to offer. I even know which corner to turn down to see the ¨Liverpool¨ mural, which has weird paintings of people who I presume are supposed to look like the Beatles (although I cannot tell who is who...and there is no Ringo), outside the ¨Liverpool Karaoke¨ bar (speaking of things that remind me of my dad). Did you know that Bolivians love karaoke? They do.
As Sunday night grows darker slowly, I start to think about the upcoming week of work. I am trying to decide what things to prepare for the kids in the casita (again, open for suggestions...15 kids, ages 3-10), and getting mentally prepared for another day of intensity with the kids across the way. I will say this...life as a volunteer in La Paz feels like a much different challenge than I have ever had before.
Bailen and Fabrizio have showed me that Super Mario Brothers 2 has not gotten any easier for me, since I tried my hand at it before...right after it´s inception...in 1988. But, it´s a lot more fun to play when it is with them. I can hear them shouting out commands to one another, shouting them out to me, calling to Mario, Luigi, the Princess, or Toad (pronounced toe-add, in this case), and then suddenly, out of no where, they will scream, ¨GAME OVER¨ in English. Or, ¨BONUS!¨. It´s hysterical. They have no idea what any of that means, but they know where the secret doors are and what the special stars do. They even told me that I wasn´t that good at the game...compared to them. But, I don´t mind. I like them, and the game, so much that I have started to even get used to their shouting to each other about the game right outside my door while I am trying to sleep-in on any morning.
I gave them some extra copies of the worksheets that I made for the kids in my casita, and they got really excited. I told them that we would have art time at nights, because they seem to really love it (and that seems like the best use of the supplies that I brought from the States...now that I have been told that the kids I am now working with cannot really use much of it). I laugh with them often, and read them stories about pigs and Madagascar on the occasional night time. They even wanted to watch my old favorite, ¨Buscando al Nemo¨(Finding Nemo). These kids are a lot of fun, and I remain glad to be living with their family.
Yesterday morning, I went on my first real outing into the countryside of Bolivia. Joining Chris, Fiona, and Katherine (another volunteer), we hopped on a mini-bus, lugging us through the bustling streets of a crowded marketplace. From the window, I watched traditionally dressed women sit on the curb, outstretching their arms to display the seeds and grains they had for sale in burlap bags beside them. I noticed kids playing in and around huge plastic shoe piles on the edge of tarp-roofed stalls. And, I watched men and women stand beside their stalls, overflowing with overflowing piles of silver pots or panty hose or even fruit, wondering who is purchasing all of these goods. The Bolivians seem to be wandering aimlessly, from stall to stall. Interestingly enough, the market seems to be divided by types of goods; all alike things are grouped together---the pots and pans, electronics, food, and so on.
We passed over hills and went straight through the market to a bustling square, where we met up with another mini-bus. This one was headed out of town; we were on the way to Tiwanaku, the site of ruins from the eldest civilization of Bolivia (pre-Inca). This mini-bus was much more crowded, including loads of people who felt like were nearly spilled out of the windows and doors. I sat on an inside seat, next to Katherine, and hugging the foggy windows (it was obviously raining outside, causing condensation on the windows). Men and women in traditional dress, modern dress, carrying mantas full of goods, briefcases, and newspapers alike hopped on the mini-bus endlessly; the bus went through La Paz and up to El Alto.
Finally, in El Alto, we set off. In what felt like just a few moments, we were in the middle of the countryside, with rolling hills and Andean peaks, lined with plush greenery and grazing cattle and sheep. Stopping at a checkpoint (which are distributed among the Bolivian and Peruvian borders---and I would imagine any other country dealing with a drug trade), I was amazed to find 5 women who had been loitering shamelessly approached us, and shouted at the windows about the goods they carried. People inside the mini-bus bargained from their seats about prices for bread and chicken livers, and eventually made purchases, which got passed over and around me. We then drove and drove, with the random stop in the middle of a field or beside a straw-roofed home with clay walls for a random passenger or two to climb off the bus, fetch the goods they had strapped to the roof, and continue on.
After an hour and a half, the mini-bus pulled up to a museum in the middle of the Andes. He told us that this was Tiwanaku.
It was. Alas, we spent the next few hours wandering through the museum and the massive complex of outdoor ruins, reading ¨Lonely Planet¨ for explanations in English about what we were seeing. Many red, grey, and yellow stones, all carved with an indigenous brilliance. I tried really hard to get into it...alas, while I enjoyed the outing and I really love being within the depths of the countryside and mountains (as opposed to city and mountains), I do not think that I am much of one for ruins. I am pretty sure that my father would be disappointed to hear (or read) my admitting this. I mean, they are stones. Sure, the carvings are really interesting and it is good to see...but, they are stones. Old stones. Sorry.
I spent the remainder of the weekend exploring museums (including the highly recommended National Museum of Art), plazas, and parks that I had not yet found in the city. Time seems to be going fast, and I feel like I am really getting a grasp on what this city has to offer. I even know which corner to turn down to see the ¨Liverpool¨ mural, which has weird paintings of people who I presume are supposed to look like the Beatles (although I cannot tell who is who...and there is no Ringo), outside the ¨Liverpool Karaoke¨ bar (speaking of things that remind me of my dad). Did you know that Bolivians love karaoke? They do.
As Sunday night grows darker slowly, I start to think about the upcoming week of work. I am trying to decide what things to prepare for the kids in the casita (again, open for suggestions...15 kids, ages 3-10), and getting mentally prepared for another day of intensity with the kids across the way. I will say this...life as a volunteer in La Paz feels like a much different challenge than I have ever had before.
# posted by Marci Soifer @ 10:17 AM 
Comments:
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Keep the entries coming.. I am reading every day.. aren't you proud?
Seems like you made the right decison to stay with the host family, they seem great!! Oh how I love Mario and Luigi.
I will brainstorm some good activities for the young ones and get back to you...
Love, Carrie
Seems like you made the right decison to stay with the host family, they seem great!! Oh how I love Mario and Luigi.
I will brainstorm some good activities for the young ones and get back to you...
Love, Carrie
Hi Marci
Great to see the old Blog up and running again. Must dust ours down and get writing again. The only problem is that we're stuck here in London while you're back doing the LatAm thing. We're incredibly jealous of your trip to Bolivia ... we had a week there and loved it. And don't worry .... Tiwanaku seemed a bit underwhelming when we were there too. It's really easy to get "ruined" out in South America.
While you're in La Paz you must go and visit our favourite witch. Martha runs the second or third stall along the main witches market street and we struck up a bit of a rapport with her while we were there. Make sure you buy your dried llama foetuses from her! Oh and you must get some finger puppets as well.
Looking forward to future installments. They bring memories of volunteering in Peru and travelling in Bolivia right flooding right back. Oh, and try pointing a camara at one of the hooded shoe-shine boys and see how quickly they disappear!
Happy volunteering
Ian & Gen
Great to see the old Blog up and running again. Must dust ours down and get writing again. The only problem is that we're stuck here in London while you're back doing the LatAm thing. We're incredibly jealous of your trip to Bolivia ... we had a week there and loved it. And don't worry .... Tiwanaku seemed a bit underwhelming when we were there too. It's really easy to get "ruined" out in South America.
While you're in La Paz you must go and visit our favourite witch. Martha runs the second or third stall along the main witches market street and we struck up a bit of a rapport with her while we were there. Make sure you buy your dried llama foetuses from her! Oh and you must get some finger puppets as well.
Looking forward to future installments. They bring memories of volunteering in Peru and travelling in Bolivia right flooding right back. Oh, and try pointing a camara at one of the hooded shoe-shine boys and see how quickly they disappear!
Happy volunteering
Ian & Gen
Marci --
As always, I'm enjoying this great journey you're taking all of us on. As expected, my senses are taking for a ride as well, and seem to -- vividly -- experience the sounds, smells and colors as you describe your experience and surroundings. The kids sound precious and remind me a bit, especially those with disabilities, of the TV documentaries on Romanian orphans. Hopefully, the conditions are not quite as bad. Look forward to reading more -- sorry for slow response, it has been rather crazy at work, but now I'm all caught up. Found the following article in today's Washington Post:
Bolivia's Rural Women Are Remaking Cities, Lives
For New Breadwinners, Transition Can Be Trying
By Monte Reel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 6, 2007; A01
EL ALTO, Bolivia -- The women attending Esperanza Mitta's community meetings moved here from tiny mountain villages and worn-out mining towns, and now they are fashioning a modern metropolis out of whatever they have in hand.
Toilet paper serves as decorative bunting on the walls of their meeting hall. A rocky vacant lot, surrounded by several leafless trees, serves as their "central plaza." A nearby soccer goal, recently used by neighborhood vigilantes to hang a thief, is considered a local law enforcement tool.
For all the ways they have changed this city, though, the women have altered their own lives even more.
"We don't have educations, so we get together and talk about how we can teach ourselves skills," said Mitta, 51. "A lot of the women just need to work out some of the fears that they have about living in a city, and they all do it, little by little."
For the first time in the world's history, more people next year will live in cities than in rural areas, according to U.N. population experts. Women are leading the urban push, leaving the countryside at higher rates than men, lured in large part by domestic service jobs. They tend to gravitate to places like this: a sprawling expanse in a developing nation struggling to provide basic infrastructure.
Because of people like Mitta, this former hamlet is now larger than the neighboring city of La Paz. El Alto had a population of about 11,000 in 1950, exploded to about 400,000 people by the 1990s and could surpass the 1 million mark next year, according to city officials. The majority of houses lack indoor plumbing and sewer service. Collecting local taxes to pay for services is difficult because about 70 percent of the economy is off-the-books.
It was in those conditions that Mitta started organizing women's meetings several years ago. About 30 of her neighbors get together to talk, many of them dressed in the same shawls and pleated skirts they wore in the indigenous communities where they were born. Newcomers are often shy; the lifestyle changes they are going through can be so overwhelming that they don't know where to start. Unlike some of the men, who had held jobs that exposed them to broader social systems, many of the women had rarely strayed from immediate family and neighbors before moving here.
"The women have to make a lot more changes than the men when they move to a city like this," acknowledged David Apaza, whose family is part of the migration wave to El Alto. "In the countryside, they've lived the same way for hundreds of years, but everything is different here."
The process of change can send women's personal relationships into dizzying spins, but it also can give them collective opportunities previously unknown. One of the most important things they have found in these unpaved streets, many said, is something unimaginable in the countryside: a voice.
Social Transformation
El Alto stretches across a plateau more than 13,000 feet above sea level. In the early evening, one's gaze is drawn to the distance -- snow-covered peaks, the lights of La Paz flickering in a bowl-shaped valley below. The immediate surroundings are less inviting: an imprecise grid of dirt streets, block after block of low-slung adobe and brick houses, abandoned tires, stray dogs nosing through trash piles.
Mitta's neighborhood is known as Villa Mercedes G, and she lives there with about 10,000 other people. She commutes each day in a series of minibuses to a housekeeping job in La Paz. The trip -- an hour and a half each way -- consumes nearly a third of her monthly salary of about $50.
One recent evening, she arrived at her simple two-bedroom brick home as the sun disappeared behind the mountains. In the electric light of the kitchen, her husband, Celadonio, stood before a stove spreading dough to make fritters for their dinner. His sun-browned hands were gloved in white flour. His left hand was missing a finger, the result of an accident when he worked in a copper mine.
"He cooks," Mitta said, and behind the frame of her glasses her eyebrow arched playfully. "He also washes clothes. We do things together because we both have to work so much."
Times have changed since Mitta became one of El Alto's urban pioneers, seeking opportunity after the mine where Celadonio worked closed in the mid-1980s. Her evolution -- replicated thousands of times over by the multitudes who follow the same route -- started as soon as she reached El Alto's point of entry and main commercial drag, La Ceja.
Then, as now, it was a sensory riot: Minibuses loaded beyond capacity nudge bumpers while jockeying for space. Street vendors hawk tea, watches, T-shirts, chickens and just about everything else. At night, men and women spill out of dance halls, the dark mud underfoot sucking at their heels. Witnessing a spontaneous street fight is the norm, not the exception.
It's a heady gateway for newcomers from mines or subsistence farms who never carried a coin in their pocket. The transition into a monetary society -- which usually occurred over generations in most developed nations -- happens immediately here.
"When a woman moves here, she can't be a housewife and take care of her family like she used to -- she has to work to survive," Mitta said.
Celadonio couldn't find a job at first after they arrived. But Mitta agreed to clean the offices of a nongovernmental organization, in exchange for a room where the couple and their four children could sleep and a little bit of food. She worked from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. seven days a week for three years. Eventually, Celadonio found work at a minibus station, and Mitta landed her housecleaning job in La Paz.
"The men at first don't want the women to work," Mitta said. "There's a lot of chauvinism, and they often treat the women badly. I have seen so many separations. I almost split with my husband -- twice. The kids always suffer, because they are alone so much. This isn't just my family that I'm talking about -- the majority of families go through this."
Her women's group meets about once a week. The variety of topics is wide: nutrition, cooking with the different types of foods available in the city, the challenges of raising children in an urban environment. Delinquency is a problem, they say. Some blame it on the hours they have to work away from home.
Conversations like theirs could probably be overheard in any city, because the women here increasingly conform to universal urban prototypes. Their personal transformations -- particularly the shift in emphasis away from complete dedication to family -- have become visible in national statistics. The Bolivian fertility rate, for example, has dropped from about 6.5 children for each woman to about 3.9 over the past 30 years. In the same period, the country's population has gone from mostly rural to about 65 percent urban.
Mitta said one of the most visible barometers of change in her neighborhood is the appearance of day-care centers.
About six blocks from her house, two men struggled with a heavy wooden pole at the side of a dirt road. They were helping a woman install electricity in a day-care center -- all on their own, with no help from city or utility officials.
A Growing Influence
The dean of Mitta's group is Bertha Vargas, who has lived in the neighborhood for nearly 30 years and claims to know everyone in it. Ask her, and she'll guess that the ratio of women to men in El Alto is 5 to 1. Ask Mitta, and she'll guess 3 to 1. Ask Mitta's husband, and he'll guess 6 to 1.
Census figures say the ratio is almost even, which is one reason many here don't put much faith in census figures.
"It seems like if there's any kind of public gathering or meeting here -- it doesn't matter what kind -- there are always more women than men," Mitta said. "I'm not sure why, but there are."
The members of the women's group say they came together out of a simple desire to share one another's burdens. When faced with such elemental changes in their personal lives, people naturally seek comfort in the community, Vargas said.
"If you have a group of women in one place, they'll always get together and make plans," she said.
Those plans are getting more political as the women expand their connections. The day before a recent group meeting, Mitta and several other women spent the morning sitting at a roadblock outside their neighborhood in a protest against the local governor.
Although La Paz is Bolivia's seat of government, El Alto is its capital of political activism. Unrest among El Alto's residents -- more than 80 percent of whom describe themselves as indigenous -- has led to massive protests and strikes that forced the resignations of successive presidents in 2003 and 2005.
The migration of rural families to El Alto has sparked the unrest, said Mayor Fanor Nava Santiesteban. Thousands come here from the countryside each year carrying little but high expectations.
"They come directly from rural areas, and when they get here, they have a lot of needs and demands," said Santiesteban, who moved to the city 23 years ago from the mining community of Llallagua. "They arrive, get together, form groups and make their demands known."
The women have been part of that, in many cases becoming far more active in civic life than they had been in the countryside. Over the past several years, the number of women helping to lead the neighborhood federations, which serve as entryways to civic activism, has increased to about 20 percent of the total.
It might not sound like much, but Mitta and the other women have definitely noticed the change.
"It feels like we are starting to get some power," she said. "That's new."
As always, I'm enjoying this great journey you're taking all of us on. As expected, my senses are taking for a ride as well, and seem to -- vividly -- experience the sounds, smells and colors as you describe your experience and surroundings. The kids sound precious and remind me a bit, especially those with disabilities, of the TV documentaries on Romanian orphans. Hopefully, the conditions are not quite as bad. Look forward to reading more -- sorry for slow response, it has been rather crazy at work, but now I'm all caught up. Found the following article in today's Washington Post:
Bolivia's Rural Women Are Remaking Cities, Lives
For New Breadwinners, Transition Can Be Trying
By Monte Reel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 6, 2007; A01
EL ALTO, Bolivia -- The women attending Esperanza Mitta's community meetings moved here from tiny mountain villages and worn-out mining towns, and now they are fashioning a modern metropolis out of whatever they have in hand.
Toilet paper serves as decorative bunting on the walls of their meeting hall. A rocky vacant lot, surrounded by several leafless trees, serves as their "central plaza." A nearby soccer goal, recently used by neighborhood vigilantes to hang a thief, is considered a local law enforcement tool.
For all the ways they have changed this city, though, the women have altered their own lives even more.
"We don't have educations, so we get together and talk about how we can teach ourselves skills," said Mitta, 51. "A lot of the women just need to work out some of the fears that they have about living in a city, and they all do it, little by little."
For the first time in the world's history, more people next year will live in cities than in rural areas, according to U.N. population experts. Women are leading the urban push, leaving the countryside at higher rates than men, lured in large part by domestic service jobs. They tend to gravitate to places like this: a sprawling expanse in a developing nation struggling to provide basic infrastructure.
Because of people like Mitta, this former hamlet is now larger than the neighboring city of La Paz. El Alto had a population of about 11,000 in 1950, exploded to about 400,000 people by the 1990s and could surpass the 1 million mark next year, according to city officials. The majority of houses lack indoor plumbing and sewer service. Collecting local taxes to pay for services is difficult because about 70 percent of the economy is off-the-books.
It was in those conditions that Mitta started organizing women's meetings several years ago. About 30 of her neighbors get together to talk, many of them dressed in the same shawls and pleated skirts they wore in the indigenous communities where they were born. Newcomers are often shy; the lifestyle changes they are going through can be so overwhelming that they don't know where to start. Unlike some of the men, who had held jobs that exposed them to broader social systems, many of the women had rarely strayed from immediate family and neighbors before moving here.
"The women have to make a lot more changes than the men when they move to a city like this," acknowledged David Apaza, whose family is part of the migration wave to El Alto. "In the countryside, they've lived the same way for hundreds of years, but everything is different here."
The process of change can send women's personal relationships into dizzying spins, but it also can give them collective opportunities previously unknown. One of the most important things they have found in these unpaved streets, many said, is something unimaginable in the countryside: a voice.
Social Transformation
El Alto stretches across a plateau more than 13,000 feet above sea level. In the early evening, one's gaze is drawn to the distance -- snow-covered peaks, the lights of La Paz flickering in a bowl-shaped valley below. The immediate surroundings are less inviting: an imprecise grid of dirt streets, block after block of low-slung adobe and brick houses, abandoned tires, stray dogs nosing through trash piles.
Mitta's neighborhood is known as Villa Mercedes G, and she lives there with about 10,000 other people. She commutes each day in a series of minibuses to a housekeeping job in La Paz. The trip -- an hour and a half each way -- consumes nearly a third of her monthly salary of about $50.
One recent evening, she arrived at her simple two-bedroom brick home as the sun disappeared behind the mountains. In the electric light of the kitchen, her husband, Celadonio, stood before a stove spreading dough to make fritters for their dinner. His sun-browned hands were gloved in white flour. His left hand was missing a finger, the result of an accident when he worked in a copper mine.
"He cooks," Mitta said, and behind the frame of her glasses her eyebrow arched playfully. "He also washes clothes. We do things together because we both have to work so much."
Times have changed since Mitta became one of El Alto's urban pioneers, seeking opportunity after the mine where Celadonio worked closed in the mid-1980s. Her evolution -- replicated thousands of times over by the multitudes who follow the same route -- started as soon as she reached El Alto's point of entry and main commercial drag, La Ceja.
Then, as now, it was a sensory riot: Minibuses loaded beyond capacity nudge bumpers while jockeying for space. Street vendors hawk tea, watches, T-shirts, chickens and just about everything else. At night, men and women spill out of dance halls, the dark mud underfoot sucking at their heels. Witnessing a spontaneous street fight is the norm, not the exception.
It's a heady gateway for newcomers from mines or subsistence farms who never carried a coin in their pocket. The transition into a monetary society -- which usually occurred over generations in most developed nations -- happens immediately here.
"When a woman moves here, she can't be a housewife and take care of her family like she used to -- she has to work to survive," Mitta said.
Celadonio couldn't find a job at first after they arrived. But Mitta agreed to clean the offices of a nongovernmental organization, in exchange for a room where the couple and their four children could sleep and a little bit of food. She worked from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. seven days a week for three years. Eventually, Celadonio found work at a minibus station, and Mitta landed her housecleaning job in La Paz.
"The men at first don't want the women to work," Mitta said. "There's a lot of chauvinism, and they often treat the women badly. I have seen so many separations. I almost split with my husband -- twice. The kids always suffer, because they are alone so much. This isn't just my family that I'm talking about -- the majority of families go through this."
Her women's group meets about once a week. The variety of topics is wide: nutrition, cooking with the different types of foods available in the city, the challenges of raising children in an urban environment. Delinquency is a problem, they say. Some blame it on the hours they have to work away from home.
Conversations like theirs could probably be overheard in any city, because the women here increasingly conform to universal urban prototypes. Their personal transformations -- particularly the shift in emphasis away from complete dedication to family -- have become visible in national statistics. The Bolivian fertility rate, for example, has dropped from about 6.5 children for each woman to about 3.9 over the past 30 years. In the same period, the country's population has gone from mostly rural to about 65 percent urban.
Mitta said one of the most visible barometers of change in her neighborhood is the appearance of day-care centers.
About six blocks from her house, two men struggled with a heavy wooden pole at the side of a dirt road. They were helping a woman install electricity in a day-care center -- all on their own, with no help from city or utility officials.
A Growing Influence
The dean of Mitta's group is Bertha Vargas, who has lived in the neighborhood for nearly 30 years and claims to know everyone in it. Ask her, and she'll guess that the ratio of women to men in El Alto is 5 to 1. Ask Mitta, and she'll guess 3 to 1. Ask Mitta's husband, and he'll guess 6 to 1.
Census figures say the ratio is almost even, which is one reason many here don't put much faith in census figures.
"It seems like if there's any kind of public gathering or meeting here -- it doesn't matter what kind -- there are always more women than men," Mitta said. "I'm not sure why, but there are."
The members of the women's group say they came together out of a simple desire to share one another's burdens. When faced with such elemental changes in their personal lives, people naturally seek comfort in the community, Vargas said.
"If you have a group of women in one place, they'll always get together and make plans," she said.
Those plans are getting more political as the women expand their connections. The day before a recent group meeting, Mitta and several other women spent the morning sitting at a roadblock outside their neighborhood in a protest against the local governor.
Although La Paz is Bolivia's seat of government, El Alto is its capital of political activism. Unrest among El Alto's residents -- more than 80 percent of whom describe themselves as indigenous -- has led to massive protests and strikes that forced the resignations of successive presidents in 2003 and 2005.
The migration of rural families to El Alto has sparked the unrest, said Mayor Fanor Nava Santiesteban. Thousands come here from the countryside each year carrying little but high expectations.
"They come directly from rural areas, and when they get here, they have a lot of needs and demands," said Santiesteban, who moved to the city 23 years ago from the mining community of Llallagua. "They arrive, get together, form groups and make their demands known."
The women have been part of that, in many cases becoming far more active in civic life than they had been in the countryside. Over the past several years, the number of women helping to lead the neighborhood federations, which serve as entryways to civic activism, has increased to about 20 percent of the total.
It might not sound like much, but Mitta and the other women have definitely noticed the change.
"It feels like we are starting to get some power," she said. "That's new."
WOW! I am pretty excited that so many people are reading, and of course, have commented.
Carrie-
Thanks for reading everyday. Ah, the benefits and differences of you now being in the US and having a laptop (with my blog set as the initial page when you open the web browser) at your disposal. I am proud. Oozing with pride, in fact.
I really like living with my family; you are right. And, while my program offers little to no volunteer community (outside of my own personal intiative), the family is a wonderful, warm place to share my Bolivian moments. And, of course, to be the Princess, or Toad, or Luigi. Love those guys too.
Yeah, brainstorm please! It is really hard, since they are of such a range of ages and because they are really impatient. I like them a lot, but aside from coloring and basic teaching, I´m not sure exactly where we going to end of doing together.
Ian and Gen-
Ah, so good to hear from you! Yeah, sometimes I can´t believe that I am on this trip, and others, I just can´t believe that I am blogging again. Alas, here we are again. Well, we would realy be here again if you were with me! I do miss you too. It is amazing what a difference my volunteer experience is without people like you two.
I´m so glad that my response to Tiawanaku was warrented by your same sentiments! And, I have been through the Witch´s Market, but I will have to return in search of your friend. I´ll let you know how that goes.
I hope that things are going well in London. I think of you two often.
Andrew-
The return of the brother-in-law. Glad to see you have finally found your way back to the blog. As always, I really appreciate your kind sentiments, compliments, and expression of a truly adventurous spirit. Also, thank you for the article. I can see it all...the women, the circles of women, the crowded transport, and the tiny homes. It is, as they mentioned, certainly ¨a sensory riot¨. And, I´m glad to know that you are getting that, loud and clear, not just from the Post, but...from me.
Keep reading, Andrew. And, thanks.
Jonathan-
Really good to hear from you, and thanks for reading. Mas. Yeah...well, keep checking back. I hope things are well in NY.
Mom-
24 pages, you say? Wow. I can´t believe it, actually. But, I trust that you speak the truth. Thanks for reading all of that, and for keeping up so well. You must be my mother. I guess that I have come a ways...but, isn´t that what an adventure is about? I´ve got a long way to go as well...so, make sure that printer is working.
Again, thanks to all for commenting, reading, and supporting me. I really appreciate hearing from you.
Be well.
Besitos-Marci
Post a Comment
Carrie-
Thanks for reading everyday. Ah, the benefits and differences of you now being in the US and having a laptop (with my blog set as the initial page when you open the web browser) at your disposal. I am proud. Oozing with pride, in fact.
I really like living with my family; you are right. And, while my program offers little to no volunteer community (outside of my own personal intiative), the family is a wonderful, warm place to share my Bolivian moments. And, of course, to be the Princess, or Toad, or Luigi. Love those guys too.
Yeah, brainstorm please! It is really hard, since they are of such a range of ages and because they are really impatient. I like them a lot, but aside from coloring and basic teaching, I´m not sure exactly where we going to end of doing together.
Ian and Gen-
Ah, so good to hear from you! Yeah, sometimes I can´t believe that I am on this trip, and others, I just can´t believe that I am blogging again. Alas, here we are again. Well, we would realy be here again if you were with me! I do miss you too. It is amazing what a difference my volunteer experience is without people like you two.
I´m so glad that my response to Tiawanaku was warrented by your same sentiments! And, I have been through the Witch´s Market, but I will have to return in search of your friend. I´ll let you know how that goes.
I hope that things are going well in London. I think of you two often.
Andrew-
The return of the brother-in-law. Glad to see you have finally found your way back to the blog. As always, I really appreciate your kind sentiments, compliments, and expression of a truly adventurous spirit. Also, thank you for the article. I can see it all...the women, the circles of women, the crowded transport, and the tiny homes. It is, as they mentioned, certainly ¨a sensory riot¨. And, I´m glad to know that you are getting that, loud and clear, not just from the Post, but...from me.
Keep reading, Andrew. And, thanks.
Jonathan-
Really good to hear from you, and thanks for reading. Mas. Yeah...well, keep checking back. I hope things are well in NY.
Mom-
24 pages, you say? Wow. I can´t believe it, actually. But, I trust that you speak the truth. Thanks for reading all of that, and for keeping up so well. You must be my mother. I guess that I have come a ways...but, isn´t that what an adventure is about? I´ve got a long way to go as well...so, make sure that printer is working.
Again, thanks to all for commenting, reading, and supporting me. I really appreciate hearing from you.
Be well.
Besitos-Marci
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