Las Amazonas: Days on the River

"Cuantos años tienes?"

The sway of the hammocks 

nearly touching

and definitely touching.

Hammocks in every possible suspended inch of air.

The London-Peruvian-Gringo, surrounded by niños—telling stories?

No.  Teaching a card game? Or was it a magic trick?

And is he charging them?  Or beating children a poker?

Largest gathering of niños I've seen on board.

Long lines wrapped around the 1st floor deck hall,

plastic bowls and tupperware in hand, awaiting the meal

meat and rice, again.

If you're lucky early, you might catch a little lentil, vegetable or sauce to accompany the meat and interminable rice.

The casual bathrooms: men, women, children.  Wash your lunch plate, take an Amazon shower, go poop:  the 3-in-one.

"Quieres probar esta fruta?"

Sharing fruit on our deck with the families headed to Yurimaguas.

Zapote: the sweet pumpkin-evoking fruit.

Throw the rinds and the pits overboard.  Feed the fish.  Just like

the fruit-dropping trees are doing now, many submerged in the rising river.

The rainy season is hard on fishing, the fish

already have plenty falling Amazon fruit to eat.

The woman who shared her fruit listens in on our conversations,

never joining in, except for her smiles and gentle silent laughter

curious and attentive.

The men who gather on the decks of the boat just watching.

Thinking? Sometimes talking.  Mostly 3½ days of watching.

The men who flipped their tops when I walked by in a swimsuit and towel -- I, hoping to swim in not too crocodile or pirana or snake or eel or any bity-itchy-electrocuty-infested waters.  I wasn't particularly human to the crowd.  I became pure body.  They became pure animal.

The Captain who fell for the clear blue eyes, like those in storybooks, and bought fried beatles for me to try.  Who heard my Bolivian Artist story and lowered our pasaje to 80 soles.  "I like you."

The two German friends we made: the Writer-Director (who knew the Amazon was such a thespian hotspot!) and the Pharmacist, who destroyed my natural assumption that all pharmacists belong to the most boring possible class of human beings.  His passion for drugs and the human body nearly enrolled me in pharmacy school.

Patricio, who spied on me from his hammock until we began a face-making game:  read a paragraph, entertain the child.  Read my book, find new contorted configuration with my mouth.  Smile at the dear niño.

These were our neighbors.  In our bedroom of 160 swinging people. 

I've never been so glad to get on a crowded boat--300? or 400? people, plus animals and cargo—boarding the river to leave loud, obnoxious Iquitos, where I was little more than a female, a gringa, a tourist, surrounded by piranhas of tour guides and taxis.  On the 3 day boat to Yurigmaguas I could be what I have forever most wanted to be.  Even in those 3½ days when I failed to shake off my femininity, my gringinity, my blue eye-inity.  More than all those definers, for 3½ days I became (only) human.

Those 3½ days we sat and ate and laid side-by-side and caught each others eyes and when we overcame our shyness we spoke, and we shared those 3 sunsets, those 3 sunrises, and we were our best curious simple selves.  Human.

The 5am cell phone, unconcious of his roommates (160 of them), the assumptive man with the stereo we're all inevitably "blessed" to enjoy.  The quiet mornings before the 6am bustle.

"Tienes un novio?"

A pregunta I've decided I'm done with. You're not going to be my 36 hour Peruvian boyfriend, nor does my dating status have much to do with my quality as a person, so the next gets a north american biting response.

Too many Peruvian men certain they want to find a gringa wife.  No, you don't.  After 3 days in Iquitos Machisma, I couldn't handle "letting it go" on the cab ride:  there are exceptions, but that machismo crap makes most of us vomit, as I explained to my driver.  We're not interested in insecure, desperate, I'm-so-afraid-of-seeming-feminine-that-I-can't-even-hug-my-male-friends-and-I-succumb-to-the-peer-pressure-of-treating-women-like-objects version of "masculinity."   Trust me, you don't want a gringa wife.

I pull out the stash of avocados, fruits and vegetables that we brought on board to supplement another boat meal of meat and rice, which I find surprising since neither seem particular native to the Amazon.  Despite one of the most proliferous ecosystems in the world, the jungle buds with malnutrition.  But many residents assert that no ever goes hungry: "There's always chicken, and there's always rice."  But bellies bulge with malnourished want: for the vitamins and minerals crowding the immediate land and water.  Western influence pulls the natives away from centuries-old culinary, nutritional and medicinal practices. 

A dear friend who recently stayed in one of the villages I passed while heading up-river felt the crisis of conscious during her jungle stay: health and medicine being taught to those living in the richest natural medicinal area in the world. Western doctors visit and medicate rural jungle inhabitants.  Reinforcing the system of western-dependence, a line of patients eagerly awaits the all-knowing doctor's diagnosis and prescription drugs.  "Could I have some more to bring back to my brother too? He is also sick."  The western medical patient-doctor system is new to them—why shouldn't a doctor visit include a handout of drugs for the entire family?  They have no idea what the small pills do, really – the risks involved, the chemicals, the side-effects.  Just give me something to fix this. Do your magic, medicine man. 

These good-intentioned service trips are rarely done in partnership with local traditional medicinalists, even though these local healers lead tours of hotshot New York researchers visiting the same jungle for botany tours to learn about the healing jungle plants.  They carry plants back to their pharmaceutical labs.  Perhaps in 20 years they will sell them back in pill form to sick jungle communities.

Dinner number two on the river:  meat and rice.  Like lunch.  I wait till the end of the line, so I miss the paltry serving of vegetables.  But there's still plenty of processed white rice.  Good news that we're two days in and I almost feel that time on the slow-boat is going too fast.  This peaceful slow boat, crowded pleasantly with regular people on this endless river.  Endless river.  Endless jungle.

The upper deck crowds at sunset, todos attentive to the sun.

3½ days by boat in the Amazon, with nothing to do but

to make sure you pay attention 

to sunsets.

Las Amazonas: Second Attempts, Second Sunrise

A waving flashlight from shore

and this enormous boat, multiple times the population of

the Amazon village with a flashlight,

pulls ashore

Or close enough

So we can lay a plank to the approaching canoe

its goods and its passengers become ours

two more hanging their hammocks

two more gently swinging their days and nights

I try to imagine the handful of citizens in this palm roof village, awaiting the occasional passage of a boat--the event of the week when all stops and citizens line to the shore to watch the floating world connecting two Amazon cities.  The hopeful passengers wake before sunrise on the day of the boat's passing, on the chance that we'll pass by at 4, at 5, at 6, at 8.  Waiting. Ready.

The 3½ day boat to Yurimaguas.

 When we boarded early to hang our hammocks we asked ourselves "on which side will the afternoon sun attack on a river that heads West to East in the Southern Hemisphere?"  But there's little "straight" west in the winding Amazon.

I am the only one on the top floor of the boat, which they close at sundown – either for safety or to ensure a bit of quiet below for those choosing to sleep below on the schedule of the sun.  At 5am no one notices me climbing the stairs to the top deck. I take in an hour of quiet before the 6am rowdiness begins with the rising sun. 

The birds and the sounds of the jungle are starting to awake.  A young boy—an early riser—hovers over my shoulder wondering what I'm writing, wondering why I'm writing. In what language?  Perhaps he's reading these very words now. Perhaps he can understand them.  Perhaps he can decipher my handwriting.   WHY is someone--a woman--a gringa--sitting at sunrise with notebook and pen? 

Hello sun on my face.  Hello you who make the morning.

Hello jungle.  Hello endless horizontal sky. 

No mountains nor valley not even a hill cutting you off.

I think the sunrise is what I am trying to pray.

For my parents, for my brother, for my sister-in-law.  For K and D, V and W and L and T and G and D and T and L and G.  For K and T and B.  For R and C and J.  For W and S and R and S, for K, M, J and J.  For U and SL and A.  For J, M and C. For J, C.  The sunrise is what I'm trying to say in my choked unprayerfulness.  I am trying to pray the fresh hope of a predawn glow.  I am trying to pray the redeeming glimmer of first orange spraying the sky.  I am praying the quietness and spacious serenity.  The audacious generosity.  I pray the awaking hum and the joy of the birds in their luminous first day flights.  I'm praying the bright colors that seem renewed, which matters more than if they are.  The new sun has gifted us with new eyes.  New mercies.  New rested bodies, new rested hearts.  New rested hope.  So the jungle shoreline nearly identical to that we saw yesterday is a new maravilla.

The new is what God is trying to tell me—the me stuck in yesterday, me in used-up hope.

This day is unique.  It is the only one.  I stutter at what more than the sunrise to say in my morning prayers, except the obvious, which God, if  there, already knows.  So Beloved Maker, please let your sunrise speak in my silence.

My joyful absence of words. 

New day.

Las Amazonas: Attempts at Prayers

Upriver on the Amazon.  Morning #1 on the trip to Yurimaguas.

I came up here at dawn—the top floor of our large boat—to pray.  Or meditate.  I struggle at 'los dos.'

Start to pray.

Overwhelmed by "Really?  You're listening?"

"Really? It matters?" 

How shall I crawl back to the foot of Your sweet presence not knowing if you're really there?  It seems to be beauty that pulls me away from You and beauty that pulls me toward You.  I read Eva Luna or experience a dinner or a symphony and ask "Why would I linger in cold prayer and brittle scripture when there is a lush world?"  But it is that song, that sunset, that novel, the praise of love-making, that cold fresh morning that proclaims and celebrates Your existence.  So I sit here, trying to join them.

I try to pray.  For K'd decision and lonliness.  For D's well being, and the words he makes that change us.  For Gs and C.  For D' broken heart. For precious J and for D.  For A and E.  For V and W. For Gs.  For U—as individuals and their brittle marriage.  For S and W and C and…T.  And.

Maybe it's more to take my heart off myself.

Or in search of something I swear I once knew how to do:

To pray, convinced.

Or in search of that sliver of life that is about more than me, in 24 hour days dominated by my tyrant happiness.  

Not everyone will change everything on a global scale.  So I look at my quaint perimeter: of people, of compost, of justice, of speaking the truth in tender love.  Lord, I don't know how to be a Christian "like I once was."  I don't know how to "buy it."  And why does it always seem like there's something being sold?   But I ask that you keep me in your hand, keep pulling me closer by whatever means and by the best means.

I feel like it's slipping away.  Not that I've found some intellectual block or invalidator or even suffered some personal crisis negating it all (though perhaps South America has been all those things), but like I'm falling out of love--the enamoration fading.   Someone "I will always love" nonetheless, at least in memories.   What I mean, my Beloved, is:  I'm not exactly sure where You are, nor how to get there.  And the road--be it silence or dancing, Christianity or Taoism--is not that essential to me.  I want to be where you are.  (If you are that close.)  Where your love permeates and invades and where perhaps I am capaz --to love you, to love others—as much as myself.  That fantasy world.

Open me up.  Cut out this heart of stone and replace it with one of flesh.

Las Amazonas: Jungle Wooing

Hard to know what of this mood is the sensuality of Isabel Allende's Eva Luna--which has finally engulfed me--or the broad bright magic of the river.  The Amazon.  Here among the weed water—land doused in mile wide water: our world's largest river.   Whether the book or the jungle or the river wind in my face, I'm a bit in love today. 

Curiosity walks me to the back of the boat where the Approachable Fat Man in white reclines on a cooler. "Do you live on the river?" I ask.  "A donde va Usted?"

He does.  He's headed home.

"En que trabajas?"  he responds.

"I'm an artist." 

He extends me his hand as if it were my own, applauding my brave declaration.  And somewhere in this mélange of literary, waterway, South American love story, I find myself.  I shake his hand and am OK being what I am.  This artistic vein of mine, is mine, and far too grown now to weed it out.  He is a painter.  He hands me his card, and his boisterous thick cheeks smile.

Wind in my face.  Jungle and stilted houses at the periphery.  River, river, river.  Like it's only me and her, and the man driving the boat, who could be God, or my destiny, who does not mind when I sit out front on the edge.  "Not too close" though he says, "because if I'm responsible for you falling in, they'll..."

Silencio es Oro (Or: Why I’m Staying in Bolivia)

I woke to a peculiar silence.

No grind of construction.

No hum of cars.

Not a single one.

I extended my horizontal hours, dragging my pillows and books outside.  I threw my "pullo" (poo-yo) under the shade of the banana tree, and made myself a second bed -- not for sleeping, for morning reading.  Today was a special holiday.

Except for the occasional outburst of Bolivian dogs (though even they seemed to note the uniqueness of the day), I have never heard such an urban silence.  Like gold.  The most shocking aural presence was a helipcoter of some sort --loud and buzzing and-- oh, no, wait...only wings of a hummingbird.  

Our holidays are often marked sensually:  smell of turkey or apple pie, sight and sound of fireworks or candlelight, the taste of eggnog and holiday jello.  But when is the day marked by silence?  Like a child waking to unique sights and smells in the house not yet understood, I awoke to something new.  Yet my very human intuition told me:  today is not like any other day.  And the silence continued to sing.      

Making brunch for my roommate Luciana's family,

And yet it is just like every other day.  The sun came up.  The dogs and birds and bugs and I awoke.  I made breakfast and tea.   I greeted my roommate.  We breathed and ate and pooped and cleaned and communicated -- the work and life that has gone on for centuries.  It wasn't even (really) a holiday.  No presents, no fancy meal, no grand gathering of families and friends -- how could we when we weren't even allowed to leave the house?  National Census Day in Bolivia, so the whole world was under 24 hour house-arrest. Everyone at home.  No shops open.  No trufis or micros or taxis.  Nothing. Except the few young census-takers meandering house-to-house on foot or bicycle.  

I cannot stress enough the distinctness of such a day.  As if God herself had silenced the world with an enormous, gentle divine blanket simply for the gift of change, the gift of a new lense, in hopes that we would see--or hear--our lives differently.  An invitation to let the gift of today's new perspective, new tone, new silence--carry into normal life.  

And that, I guess, is why I'm staying in Bolivia.  

Everybody dances in Bolivia

The census only lasted one day (though judging by the crowds at the markets the day before and the tons of food purchased, you'd think it was a month-long census. How much meat can one family eat in a 24 hour period, really?!).  Disappointingly the census itself seemed to be a joke.  Sloppy counting, questions were skipped, our census-taker filled the form in pencil--allowing whomever to possibly change our answers to suit their political agenda.  Not all my friends had the same experience, but I've weak faith in the quality of the census (a great loss, really).  But lost quality-censusing-opportunity aside, I hope Bolivia recieved the uniqueness of the day when cars and work and motion did not exist.  Hearing only the birds and wind and the sound of families being together, because there was no place else to go.  

Making fresh pasta with the new Italian roommate

In the evening I risked arrest with a friend, unable to resist the incredible tranquility of the day.  We took to the streets and ran and ran and ran, from city to campo to city again, running freely in the streets without fear of machines.  We passed street soccer games, grandmothers resting in the sunset, and lovers kissing in quiet parks.   For these precious hours we stopped our frantic lives, almost as if some disaster had stripped away the mechanism of the daily grind. In the moments after the storm we found again our humanity -- walking at dusk, chasing a ball, holding the child's hand.   This was invitation to imagine a new way of life.

I came to Bolivia in February 2012, inspired initially by a promise I made to myself at 22 at college gradution: that I would take sabbatical years throughout my life.  

I admired the sabbatical practice in the acadmic world, but perhaps more so in the Jewish tradition where the marking differently of time--for the earth and for our spirits--was not merely rest, but rest that redefined and blessed the routine on either side.  Let the Sabbath inform the working days and working years.  Let what is different help you reimagine regular life.

Imagine if you will a daily life without cars and noise.  Imagine the forced time in your home with your roommate or your children or your spouse, blessed by the freedom to not leave.  To linger at the table and ask just one more question.  To listen more intently--to the birds, to your loved ones, to yourself--because you have the time.

Daily life in Bolivia is not that peaceful.  Tomorrow the banging and speeding and regular life returns (even though it's American Thanksgiving).  I will return to my everyday life, as I now know it to be.  But I remain in a sabbatical season.  Bolivia breaks the routine of life as I knew it for 29 years.  It is my new lense.  

I'm lingering in my "Bolivian sabbatical" until at least 2013, hoping it will continue to shape and form me and the years to come, and that meanwhile I can also give something back to the community I've found and am making here.

The Nuts and Bolts

New Home. (The most important room, anyway)

Why am I staying in Bolivia?  

Or, why not stay in Bolivia?

The reasons to "come home" are obvious:  friends, family, cold weather, and a long list that could follow.  I miss you all (So very much).  I miss the rain and the cold and the snow.  I miss feeling at home.  I miss my culture.

But the reasons to stay:

• I felt drawn to stay initially (back in July) at some gut level: "Don't go yet.  You're not done here."  I'm not done with Bolivia, and she's not done with me.  For whatever it's worth, my gut--shaped by personality, prayer, counsel, emotions and who knows what else--said linger a little longer.
• My second impulse to stay came from a job offer from the Archdioses of Cochabamba: a completely unique project led by a team of two theologians, an agronomist, a lawyer, a pyschologist...and they'd been seeking...an artist.  This diverse team will do formation workshops among social leaders (teachers, pastors, counselors, politians) in the communities in and around Cochabamba.  I found it hard to pass up the opportunity to work on such a diverse team, learning (and arguing for certain) together -- as well as within the various (nine) communities where the workshops will take place.
• The funds for our full-time work on this project (we've already started some preliminary work) which were to begin in January 2013 were suspended until June 2013.  Which meant, without income security in January, suddenly meant I was broke.  I was already teaching a few voice (singing) students. By word-of-mouth I developed a little studio.  Now, the word-of-mouth urgently required a microphone.  Canto Cocha is my "new" voice studio, with a growing number of private (and group) students.   http://www.facebook.com/JulieKurtzCantoCocha



Another reason I'm staying in Bolivia:  I looooove the markets
(But stay away from the cheese man's stand...very dangerous)

• "Reciprocity" is a big word when talking about gringos working or volunteering in Bolivia.  Typically we gain more from the experience than Bolivians do, but the question pushes the point:  the volunteering, work, ministry or research that you're doing within a community--how is it benefitting the community?  Is there a recipricol exchange?  There aren't many singing teachers in Bolivia.  And reviews from my students of their past experiences in singing classes are not generally positive.  So, I'm serving a role.  I take singing for granted, but a musical instrument within your own body is a glorious thing.  When I kick myself because I'm not fighting world injustice as a lawyer or doctor or a hardcore environmental activist, I pause for a moment to consider power of making art with our own bodies.  I want to live in a world where we respect the limits of of planet, where we hold large corporations accountable for their exploitation, where journalism is brave and shapes the world for better.  I also want to live in a world that sings.  

Performing in Novecento with my Jazz Trio "Otoño Eterno"
(With my roommate Gaia noticeably in the foreground)

I don't disconnect the seemingly "larger" global goals from the joy of every person in this world making music.  Lenin, afterall walked out of a concert, saying "If I keep listening to Beethoven's Appassionata, I won't be able to finish the revolution.  

My hope is that music's beauty will captivate us a little longer--and shape our revolutions.   So until June 2013, I am a musician.  Full liberty to claim that title. Profesora de Canto (Singing) and a performing musician around the city of Cochabamba.  Freedom to invest and delight and work in music.

• I've felt vocationally lost for some time, and Bolivia seems as good a place as any to work out some of my confusion, my curiosity (I'm exploring a few strange paths that have teased me for a long time, as well as some closer to home), my insecurity, and search my soul.
• Still sorting out a broken heart. Bolivia = avoidance/processing/healing time and space.
• Spanish.  Yeah, I totally speak Spanish.  But it could be better.  It will be better.  By the time I leave I might even understand mouth-full-of-bread-Spanish.   Some I'm sticking around to get myself more fluent.
• I feel like I'm just starting to know what questions to ask.  And perhaps now am developing the stability to be able ask them.  The first months are such a shell shock that one can barely absorb, let alone ask thoughtful questions about this place, its culture and values.  Six months (my initial projection of my time here) is a long visit.  I'd like to know Bolivia better than that. 



Making pasta together

• I'm also asking questions of myself.  There was an obvious touch of "spiritual quest" in my launch to Bolivia:  Who am I?  How much of my core identity really has to do with my spiritual roots--my "identity in my Creator" and what in actuality is defined by my culture, my economic class, my wants and cravings, or even my community of friends?  There's no doubt that the stresses and challenges of (especially the last several months) have exposed me.  Nothing like stripping away all you've known for 29 years to rock the boat and throw your roots into question.  I'm incredibly grateful that the worst of the storming has (seemingly) passed.  My prayer is that I can grow in the aftermath.  Search my soul, find my Loving Creator there, and work toward living that identity more honestly, more bravely, more compassionately.   In reality Bolivia's spiritual pressure has had a lot to do with exposing my limits.  A few weeks ago I was pumped to attend a large concert, including performances by some of my (high school) students as well as friends.  But at 8:30pm on this particular Saturday night I wasn't sure I could maintain myself upright.  There was nothing I could do but take myself to bed.  Hard to know how much was physical, how much pyschological or spritual, but no matter. My body insisted on behald of the rest of me:  Easy, Julie.  Rest, Julie.  Slow down, dear one.  Your eyes are bigger than your soul.

"Crashing" is more vociferous here.  Instead of the false mask of "managing" the stresss, my body sends me to bed at 8:00pm or I start weeping while biking to the supermarket.  Self care exacts attention, and I learn to say:  I'm not going to be able to pull that off.  I must say no.  I need processing and prayer time tonight, nothing else.  That is beyond my limits.  

I'm no master yet, but the little gem in it all is less hating of my limits.  So I can't. So what. My energy is lacking or my spanish isn't sufficient or I'm not an accomplished guitarist or I crave some gringo conversation and culture or I'm not saving the world and I don't know how to live as simply as others and I'm not a perfect environmentalist or Christian or non-racist or culturally-open-gringo or justice-minded artist or human-being.

Street of Tarata, on a Festival Day.  Note the Drawings of what's being served.

This recent season in Cochabamba has been intensely personally focused.  A dear mentor observed recently that "aspiring Julie" and "pain Julie" have merged.  Perhaps so.  My blog writings have notably taken on that tone as well.  The evolution from visitor to resident chaffed down to my bones.   I'm looking forward to letting my focus drift more outwardly after months of staring at my guts.  (Which means you can expect upcoming photos of dancing drunk cholitas and rants about Evo's environmental policies and sexism.)

As we breathe the holiday season I miss you all (and cold weather) more than ever.  I celebrated a lovely Thanksgiving here, but that doesn't mean I didn't cry while making the cornbread stuffing.  It was a definite gift to share some turkey, pumpkin (well, ok, zapallo) pie and stuffing with Bolivans and gringos -- and in particular share sadness with a few other gringos missing home, missing friends, imaging what their families were doing every hour of the special day.

I've never before been so far away from so many people I love so much.  I treasure you.  Tomorrow I head to Colombia to see my parents, the Caribbean Coast (water!! Now I understand why Bolivians are so pissed about losing their coastline), and meander slowly back to Bolivia via land and boat (including days on the Amazon River and the Peruvian Andes).  I'm pumped about my upcoming adventure, sure.  Frankly, I'm dying to get out of Bolivia for a couple weeks and experience another aspect of South America. 

Api y Pastel, typical Bolivian Christmas Eve fare
(Well, ok, any night of the year--it's delicious)

But it pains me not to be coming home.  My community of friends and family is the sweetness of my life.  I am going about the work of making life and community here--and it is beautiful.  But each individual is uniquely beautiful.  No one here can replace you and none of you will ever replace my growing family of friends here.  I respect and admire and am inspired and delight in and love you dearly.  I'm incredibly fortunate to count you as beloved friends and collegues and partners in the Gospel and in our faulty yet earnest attempts to cultivate the goodness of this world.  Maybe absence makes the heart grow fonder, but moreso, it makes mine grow grateful.  How rich am I to know you and count you as part of the fabric of my life.  The Merriest of Christmases to you all, amidst the mess and beauty of this world.  And a new year full of gratitude.

Los quiero mucho,

Julie