Sexism.

My first chica taxi driver.  Wow.  Woman driver.   Coincidentally it happened to be the same day that in a tienda outside of Cochabamba (Tiquipaya--a "suburb" of sorts) I received unabashed whistles from a table of men as I entered the cafe-store, passing not three feet from them.  There was no chance I could ignore it.  The temperature of my blood shot up.   In broad daylight and with a compañero, I had no qualms about my safety, so I reacted immediately:  "Excuse me. Is there a problem?"  With every ounce of sharpness capable in human eye I stared at them.  The rest of the outdoor patio joined me in stunned silence.  Not least of all my accompanying friend (a male) who, in his state of shock, did nothing.

(Nothing to do with taxis and catcalls...)

Teva, daughter of my roommates Aliya & Marcello, turned one at the end of

March. We celebrated in style...music and dancing, puppets, paint and bubbles.

Here they are singing (Music Together style).

I don't know if those men had ever had a woman confront their harassing behavior.  Their frozen confounded looks obstensibly testified this.  In the short walk back to the fiesta my compañero told me he'd never seen a woman respond like so--he assumed the men hadn't either.  

I was fully prepared to march past the whistlers a second time after our purchase.  My compañero asked if we could leave by another exit.  He was clearly more uncomfortable with the scene than I (one wonders if he would have been as uncomfortable had the men harassed me yet I had done nothing).  The whole event was disturbingly intense to him.  

As a woman I'm no stranger to being objectified by a male-dominated culture.  I can't go to the supermarket without whistles from a stand of magazines instructing me that my greatest worth is my body: my role first and foremost is to serve the visual pleasure of male citizens.  Frankly the "disturbingly intense" scene was a relief.  I can't as easily talk back to the magazines.  I can't as easily forgive glossy paper.

This is why one elects to be born in a family of puppeteers and musicians.

In the safety within the doors of the tienda, while the woman filled our bottles with chicha, my compañero regained words: 

"I've never seen that before.  That was really intense. You're so angry."  

"Of course I'm angry," I articulated, "I'm not an animal, I'm a human being.  They treated me as an object."

The woman filling our bottles had seen the episode as well.  She silently brought me a complimentary mug of chicha and looked me in the eyes.  She said nothing as I justified my "shocking" behavior to my compañero, but quietly nodded.

It's not always a winning day in the "lucha" against sexism.  The mayor of Santa Cruz (who also has known drug ties) fondled the rear end of a female city council member on camera, yet instead of calling for resignation, many Bolivians are applauding him.  Probably the man who told me in the midst of my morning run yesterday that he "thought I was a dog--that is why he whistled at me" would be among the applauders.  "...Go back to your country if you don't like it."

The female cab driver who brought me back to Cochabamba is the only woman she knows driving cabs.  "It's difficult," she explained, "because all the men think women should only be in the house and in the kitchen."   

But she didn't want the leave the country to earn enough as a single mother to support her children, so she took up a job as a driver.  She is a thousand times braver than I.

My super cute "roommate"

Loneliness and Light

It's been a while since I felt truly lonely.  

The initial loneliness wave hit when I first arrived in Bolivia and posted my first blog.  Funny how "connection" to the world in electronic form actually accentuated the feelings of loneliness and sadness.  Before I posted and read the wonderful emails in response, I could imagine myself completely remade--new life, new home, new world.  But the wonders of internet forced me to look straight in the face of all I lacked.

A night of board games with the collective

The second wave landed 3 weeks in.  Deeply frustrated by my language skills (which seemed to be at a standstill) and confused about my role here, I felt lost.  It was a Friday. The second consecutive Friday in which I fell flat on my face emotionally and physically for no apparent reason.  I spend the afternoon in bed -- a puddle of myself.  I swore that my spanish wasn't improving.  Hadn't improved in 3 weeks. I was growing stupid.  And I missed all of you.  I missed the "home" of community.  I missed a particular love, lost. 

Surrounded by people who "belonged" my visitor status was blatent, heightened all the more by the family dynamic of the collective (those that aren't related in the collective act almost as if they are).  I realized in joining the collective I was jumping into a family that wasn't mine--I had to discern what life outside the collective I would have in addition to my immersive experience within.  The three week mark was also when my oh-so-American desire to feel important, useful, and to max out my time with "the most valuable, important, interesting things" began to eat at me.  I wasn't all that "useful" here. I spoke like baby.  I felt like a baby.  I had to seek my identity outside of my own "impressive usefulness" or I wasn't going to find it.  

Supplementing dinner...climbing the tree
was worth it...the salad was delicious

The third wave swelled this past week:  Holy Week, or "Semana Santa."  (I am, however, resisting its proper title here having witnessed its more superficial manifestations without experiencing the significance underneath.)  The importance of Holy Week snuck up on me.  Distant from my community and the natural home of my usual traditions, I began to feel desperate.  Would the week pass without death and resurrection? (Or worse: a lame death and resurrection)  Would I only taste the week's journey in traditions and language that I didn't understand--grasping for their meaning?  And what about my favorite--beautiful, dark Good Friday?  Would I be surrounded only by Catholic formality?  Or by peppy evangelicals who had no interest in the dark invitation to grief?  How could I possible replace my traditional Sunday meal (four elaborate courses and an blood-thirsty egg hunt) and the company and cause that make the meal worth having?

I needed something to connect me to the best of all weeks in the chrisitian calendar.  I committed to fasting with a friend back home--but this did not ward off the swelling depression (perhaps it exasperated it).  It was almost too real--too physical, setting me in confusion with the world around me.

"Aliya! help!"...shouting to my roommate through the 2nd
story window.  "Could you help me?--the ladder moved.
And...uhm..could you grab my camera--it's in my room."

So it turns out Holy Week is tough in another land, especially among my community here which is harshly critical of the church. Not that I blame them--I share most of their sentiments.  It's what we don't share that week that was difficult.  But there is grace in this church-critical community.  On Thursday I finally cracked: I unleashed my heart and the difficultly of the week to a couple people.  They invited me (if I liked) to share some aspect with them.  My roommate (who's Jewish-American) had been blessed by a similar sharing of her traditions with her previous Bolivian host family--so she passed on the goodwill.  

I decided to hold a sort of Maundy Thursday service (albeit, on Saturday, but whatever).  I love that in this ceremony we put Jesus into our bodies, into our mouths -- and that his last act among his friends was washing their feet.  That was his goodbye party.  It's a party I'd like to share.

I prepared the bread, the wine, and other Mediterraean goodies for our feast.  
I warmed the water.  I practiced the song.

I lit the candles and nervously pulled my prepared spanish liturgy--the "script" for the night's ritual from my pocket.  I shared about Jesus' last passover--his goodbye meal and the beauty of it being a night of service and sacrifice.  I shared about my personal resonance with this sensual, physical sacrament--and eventually we imitated Jesus' service--and sharing of himself--by washing each others' feet.  I never knew how beautiful the sound of water could be.  I sat there in the room lit by candles and soft guitar music--and listened to warm sound of water.  

I read passages from the night of that dinner in Jerusalem, shared a Luis Espinol (a radical priest who was martyred in Bolivia during Liberation Theology's heyday) poem and one of my favorite Thomas Merton prayers. We feasted in candlelight--talking gently as water, reflecting.  

I recieved many thank yous from the small crowd gathered that evening.  It seems to have blessed my community, but I can't tell you how important it also was for me.  
Late in life, Jesus had a powerful encounter with a woman--a stranger--at a well.  It began with him asking for help. Please. Give me something to drink.   I asked of my roommates in my deep thirst on Thursday night...and the dinner and ceremony was the result.  This act, this ritual, this sharing fed me deeply -- as I hope it did them.  I am so grateful for the chance to have shared part of myself with them -- a part that previously did not feel free and certainly felt misunderstood.

That night my roommate put her Hebrew to excellent use, blessing the bread and wine.  We also read one of my favorites passages to bless our meal:

Vengan.  Todos los sedientos,    Come! all you who are thirsty,   

vengan a las aguas; come to the waters;

Y los que no tengan dinero, vengan, and you who have no money,

 compren y coman.  come, buy and eat! 

Vengan, compren vino y leche Come, buy wine and milk

Sin dinero y sin costo alguno. without money and without cost.

¿Por qué gastan dinero en lo que no es pan, Why spend money on what is not bread,

Y su salario en lo que no sacia?  and your labor on what does not satisfy?

Escúchenme atentamente, Listen, listen to me, 

y coman lo que es bueno, and eat what is good,

Y se deleitará su alma en la abundancia.      and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.

(Isaías 55)

We closed with one of my favorite prayers:

Cochabamba's Cerro del Cristo at dusk

My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please You does in fact please You. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart  from that desire. And I know that, if I do this , You will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust You always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for You are ever with me, and You will never leave me to face my perils alone.

(Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude)