Customer Service, Boredom (and touching the Sun)

 Illampu (Bolivia's 2nd highest at 6.368m/20,892ft) from Lago Titicaca

The high-altitude sun finally peaks around the corner, warming me on my lakeside rock.  So fuerte is her glow at the highest large lake in the world.  Never, it seems, have the clouds been so near--the wide expanse of sky across this enormous lake. Clouds so close to the earth, clouds so close to my hand.  One has a real sense that the rest of the world is beneath us--all around, but farther down.  Farther from the clouds, the sun. This is the top of the world.  
We walk down the lakeside to the one-room schoolhouse where friends share the generous extras of lunch: quinoa soup.  A discussion with Heidi and Katy regarding their university students tiring of discussions on privilege and colonialism: "They 'get it' as an academic topic, yet they complain about 'boring tour guides' at the Casa de la Moneda," completely unconscious of their privilege:  the luxurious upper class privilege of boredom.

A hike near Cochabamba with Becky & Thomas (and
others who weren't pretty enough to make the photo)

As I clocked in over 200 hours of pure travel between Colombia and Bolivia, I couldn't help but admire the great patience of Colombians, Peruvians and Bolivians making their journeys.  I distinctly remember the men (and a few women) simply staring off the port and starboard sides during the 3½ day Amazon journey: never with a face of complaint or boredom—rather a sense that  they "should" be there.  Nor did they fill all their "free" time (which is all 3½ days...what else do you have to do?) with fascinating books, journaling or poker:  a few games, a few conversations, but mostly gazing off the side of the boat.  Almost any Bolivian the age of my friend's American university students would be awed by the Casa de la Moneda in Potosi.  Potosi!  Famous city of silver, violated by the Spanish who sucked enough silver from the bowels of its hills to "build a silver bridge from Potosi to Spain."  I had the privilege of sharing la Casa de la Moneda with a Bolivian friend, fascinated by her homeland's history.  At 31 it was her first visit.  We didn't discuss the tour guide.

La Paz at dusk - looking up at El Alto from the home of a MN-Bolivian friends

During a recent week in La Paz I swung into a shop where I encountered a gringo tourist, a "mochilero", with an open ice cream in hand.  He was attempting, in his non-existent Spanish, to reason with the casera (shopkeeper).  I came upon them, the gringo pointing at his somewhat melted ice cream, and the casera  staring blankly at him, confused.  I stepped in as translator. 

English to Spanish:  "It's melted. It's not good."

Spanish to English:  "It was in the freezer."

English to Spanish:  "Can I exchange it for a different one?"

Spanish to English:  "Yes, you can buy another one."

English to Spanish:  "I can't just exchange it?"

Spanish to Engligh:  "You already opened it."

Gringo to Me:  "But it's kind of melted."

Me to Gringo:  "It's Bolivia."

My first time picking oranges on the trail,
with Gallo & Don Augustín.

I doubt it ever really registered with shopkeeper what the young gringo was requesting. Can she return a half-melted ice cream to the producer?  She must earn 5 Bolivianos off that ice cream: that is survival, that is business.  What do you mean exchange it for another one because it's not good enough? 

I won't scoff at North American excellence and efficiency, nor even its customer service; I miss the hell out of it.  But making melted ice cream and boredom "smaller" is (sometimes) worth it -- to be that much closer to the Sun.

Descending to the Amazon from the Andes in the La Paz province