Bienvenidos a Bolivia!

"Simply superlative - this is Bolivia. It's the hemisphere's highest, most isolated and most rugged nation. It's among the earth's coldest, warmest, windiest and steamiest spots. It boasts among the driest, saltiest and swampiest natural landscapes in the world." 




Thus begins Lonely Planet: Bolivia and thus began the semester for my students and me, as we dropped into La Paz's airport at 13,325 feet. Our plane landed higher than most US residents will ever hike. The air was cold and clear. Mt. Illimani loomed on the horizon, snow-capped and stark, hovering another 8,000 feet above the capital itself. We soon transferred to our flights on BOA, Bolivia's state-run airline, which has good service and fantastic rates. 

Jean Carla Costas, Amizade's Bolivia Site Director, greeted us at the airport in Cochabamba. Cochabamba is a beautiful, temperate city filled with avenues of palms and ringed by mountains. It's population is near 600,000, making it roughly similar to Baltimore for a US comparison. But Cochabamba has a different pace.  


Yes it has its hardworking professionals and many others bustling about, but there is an unmistakable emphasis on friends, family and warm relationships. The students learned that soon after we dropped them off at their homestays, as their whole new families and many members of the extended families were soon home for lunch. Life is distinctly different when every member of the household returns each day for a family lunch meal, followed by a nap. 


Bolivia is of course a developing country, but that category itself is so broad as to be meaningless. Much like life in a developed country - in New Orlean's 9th Ward or in New York's Upper West Side - has substantial variance, so too does life in a developing country. The students are staying in North Cochabamba, a section of town populated primarily by professionals. They are pleased with their accomodations and enjoying their new families. 

At left, an Amizade Homestay room. 


The homestays are the bases from which the students will go out to take Spanish classes, learn more about Bolivian development, history, and politics, experience the energy and diversity of Cochabamba, serve with an orphanage and center for children with disabilities, and perhaps - get involved with environmental initiatives, hike an Andean peak, and visit one of Bolivia's many natural wonders, whether jungle or salt flat.  For the moment, they're just getting their bearings, and I'm working to share those bearings with you.

Cochabamba is at once modern and traditional. Quechua people, the indigenous group descendant from the Incan Empire, regularly sell vegetables and other goods at local markets and stalls. Quechua and Aymara traditions predominate in the rural areas, exist in parts of the cities, and have recently been influential in the government of President Evo Morales, Bolivia's First Indigenous President.


The picture at right is from the intersection at the opening of El Pando, an area bursting with young professionals, students, and the attendant happening bars and restaurants. Two Quechua women are in the foreground, selling flags to pedestrians and stopping cars. Immediately behind them is a large moon-sliver statue, commissioned for a summit of the Americas held in Cochabamba in the late 1980s, and looming in the background - one of El Prado's less happening restaurants.






Like in the United States, wealth and poverty tend to fall along class lines here. Also like in the United States, a representative of a historically under-represented group has recently assumed the Office of the Presidency. Nonetheless, the poverty within the city is mostly located in the predmoninately Quechua South. And the experience of the campesinos - the mostly indigenous rural farmers - is profoundly different from what exists in Northern Cochabamba. 


The average Bolivian makes $900 a year. Of course, the professionals I've been referencing don't hover anywhere near that rate. The upper twenty-five percent of the population, in terms of income, averages about $6,000 per year. I don't have the data for the upper 5%, which is no doubt much higher. There's a middle group, about thirty-five percent of the whole population, that has an average annual income of about $3,600. It includes rural and urban people working almost exclusively in the informal economy (also called the black market). 


The informal economy is massive in developing countries. Today a Bolivian business person told me about buying un-copyrighted computer programs on the streets (or DVDs or CDs). He said that less than three percent of Bolivian businesses use copyrighted Microsoft programs. All the rest are knock-offs. That is one small, incredibly meaningful, indicator of how much business - and at what levels - does not pass through the official radar. 


Forty percent of the Bolivian population survives almost exclusively in the informal economy, largely engaging in subsistence farming. Most of that group lives on less than $1 per day (This, the data above, and much more come from Dunkerly's Bolivia: Revolution and the Power of History in the Present).  Amizade's service partnerships support community organizations working with that lower seventy-five percent of the Bolivian population. We've built an orphanage, supported children with disabilities, cared for children in orphanages, added classrooms onto schools, and much more. 

Visiting Amizade's Bolivia site right now are Martie and Marvin Wachs, two retirees who have been working with Amizade in Bolivia for more than five years. They've helped complete the Hogar de Ninos Orphanage, started a program supporting a Center for Children with Disabilities by selling fair trade greeting cards, built school classrooms, donated furniture to furnish the orphanage, and otherwise dedicated substantial time and resources to support and empower many Bolivians. 

 

That's Marvin Wachs at left, laughing with Margaret Roche this afternoon at a barbecue for the Wachs at Jean Carla's house. Margaret is a student at the University of Massachusettes, and has joined Amizade and West Virginia University for this semester program in Bolivia. The Wachs keep a website to update friends and family about their travels. You'll see that soon after they began traveling, they decided to commit to Bolivia through Amizade. 




The Wachs are eagerly anticipating an upcoming Amizade Open Volunteer Program, where additional volunteers will join them on another community-driven construction project. The students are acclimating to the area, appreciating the mountain views and good weather, and preparing to attend tomorrow evening's vitally important regional soccer match before beginning classes this week. For the moment, I'll leave you with a few scenes from the Cochabamba streets, which are as indicative of the enticing culture and severe class differences as anything I've written above. Pictured below: a typically festive public bus, a party leaving a recent wedding, and another fairly common scene - a family on a motorcycle (but in this case only 3, not the normal 4).