24 Jan 5

I’m leav­ing Bolivia tomor­row, and I couldn’t be hap­pier. Not because I don’t like Bolivia, but because I’ve been sick the whole time I’ve been here. I’m hop­ing my next stop (Sao Paulo) will be a new, less con­gested, chap­ter in my trav­els. But before I go, I do have some obser­va­tions I want to remember.

Chicken. Every­body eats chicken. A lot of chicken. With fries. Lot’s of fries. French Fries. Every­where you turn, Chicken and Fries. If it’s not fried, it’s still chicken and pota­toes. One place I went had a very nice soup with the chicken in a large bowl with broth and pota­toes, and even a car­rot to spice things up. It reminded me of some­thing my Grand­mother (my moth­ers mother) would make. It was very good, and very cheap. But also monot­o­nous

Peo­ple talk a lot about poverty in these places, and I’ve seen a lot of it. Bolivia is sup­posed to be the poor­est coun­try in South Amer­ica, and that’s say­ing a lot. But at the same time, peo­ple have enough food to eat and are gen­er­ally very happy, or so it seems to me. It reminds me a lot of my grand­mother (again, moth­ers mother — Lilly.) She was very poor by almost any mea­sure. She was very fru­gal (except when it came to cos­tume jew­elry.) But she also had enough to eat, and didn’t really want for much. I guess when you don’t have a lot, you don’t desire much more. Was she richer than peo­ple liv­ing in Bolivia? I don’t know — prob­a­bly, because she lived in a richer coun­try. But was she able to pur­chase more, or did her money go any fur­ther? I don’t imag­ine so. She worked a ton for what she had. I remem­ber going to visit her on her 70th Birth­day — she worked 80 hours that week (if you ever won­der if unions are good, ask me — but that’s a dif­fer­ent story.) She’s dead now, so we’ll never be able to know the answer to some of these ques­tions. She was able to put all of her four chil­dren through school, and a cou­ple through col­lege — I don’t know if that would be pos­si­ble here. Did she have bet­ter access to health­care? Prob­a­bly not. Health­care in the US is the best in the world, if you can afford it — she couldn’t. Oth­er­wise, it’s just pub­lic health­care, and it’s not the best. She wasn’t one of those sto­ries you hear about where some clean­ing lady leaves a cou­ple of mil­lion dol­lars to a school. At least I don’ t think so any­way — my mom and uncle could be hold­ing out on me. I think it’s the “Amer­i­can Dream” that made the dif­fer­ence in her children’s life and ulti­mately mine.

The shoeshine boys (there are a lot of them) gen­er­ally are very young and wear full mask — not quite a ski mask, since peo­ple don’t really ski around here, but a full knit mask just the same. It makes them look very sin­is­ter. Once I saw a girl of about six years old get­ting her shoes shined. It was cute.

Things in La Paz, and Bolivia in gen­eral, are very cheap. I went out to a chicken — always with the chicken — din­ner the other night (Chicken breast and wing, fried, and french fries.) The total was 10 BS, or $1.25. Today, I splurged and got a soda too for $1.50. Street food is even cheaper. Even the Cafe on the first floor of the hotel I’m stay­ing in (and very pop­u­lar with tourist) is cheap, even though I sus­pect it’s expen­sive for locals. A cup of Coca Tea is 4 BS (or .50) and and expresso grande (dou­ble) is 8 BS (or $1.) The first night I went to a great restau­rant, had a steak and a cou­ple of beers, and it was less than $9/US. I went out for two slices of pizza and a soda, and the total was 20 BS. My first thought was — what a rip off — then I did the math. I was read­ing the Stranger (a Seat­tle weekly) and they did a review of a bar that I’ve been to, and men­tioned the $8 mar­tini, and I thought — “my god. Who would pay that much for a drink.” Then I remem­bered that I did.

I’ve heard that Argentina is even cheaper than Bolivia and the steaks bet­ter, but I can’t believe that to be true. What next — wait­ers strolling from table to table with dif­fer­ent chunks of meat on skew­ers, cut­ting as much off as you want, until you cry uncle. Instead of Mickey Mouse, they would have a giant, walk­ing, cow as a mas­cot, with the var­i­ous cuts of meat high­lighted on it’s body. To top it off, wine would be cheap too. This would be some sort of Magic Meat Land, not a country.

Why a bowler hat, and not a fedora as in Peru? Appar­ently the British brought the bowler when they were build­ing the rail­road in the past (mid 1850’s?) and unlike the British, it never left. As with a fore­head dot in India, and a ring or weight gain and sweat pants in the US, you can tell the mar­i­tal sta­tus of a woman by her hat. Worn to the side means she’s sin­gle, gent’s. Straight up on the head means “hands off — she’s mar­ried.” I won­der if I can talk my bride to be into a bowler hat instead of a dia­mond that cost a cou­ple of months salary. “It’s inter­na­tional!” I’ll say. Think of the fun when, instead of a small box for a ring, I bring out a honk­ing hat box. Imag­ine her sur­prise when, instead of the largest dia­mond the world has ever seen, it’s a bowler hat in that big box.

Appar­ently the pro­test­ers don’t protest on the week­ends, which is good. I think every­one — pro­test­ers and police, go to the soc­cer matches and do the same things they do dur­ing the week, only over teams, not gov­ern­ments. Watch­ing the news this Mon­day morn­ing (try­ing to see who was going to the Super Bowl), I see they are back at it again. But on the week­end, noth­ing. One thing I did notice, is that unlike in the US, the police use quite a bit of restraint. One clip I watched had the pro­test­ers forc­ing them­selves behind a fence of some sort of gov­ern­ment build­ing. How long do you think some­thing like that would last in the good ole’ US of A? You’d envy Rod­ney King by the time the “Man” was done with you. Can you say “enemy combatant.”

I always thought that going to Florida was like going back to the 80’s as far as music went. This is like going back to the 70’s, with occa­sional 80’s easy lis­ten­ing. Right now they are play­ing “Love is in the Air.” Alan Par­sons (Project?) is com­ing to La Paz in a cou­ple of weeks, and it’s all over the TV and radio. I hope he appre­ci­ates how pop­u­lar he is. I think it’s rec­i­p­ro­cal — he doesn’t get a lot of love other places, and Bolivia doesn’t get a lot of musi­cians com­ing through. It’s only 8 mil­lion peo­ple, or about the size of the greater LA area (I think.)

When I left my hotel room this morn­ing, there were a TON of peo­ple set­ting up table on the street out­side, as in you walked shoul­der to shoul­der at a very slow pace. I haven’t been able to fig­ure out exactly what the occa­sion is, but I have fig­ured out what those huge stacks of money were for. Appar­ently peo­ple sell these stacks on the street, and then you go to other peo­ple (but some­times the same peo­ple do it), who bless the stack of money by run­ning it through smoke from a bra­zier. The smoke is cre­ated by dump­ing what appears to be some sort of herb onto the char­coals in the bra­zier. And, accord­ing to my fake money seller, the stack of money is for ALL luck. I wanted one for amore, but they only had the gen­eral pur­pose luck. It was a pretty good deal for 1 Bs. At one booth, a man (who looked vaguely like a por­cu­pine — his hair had a bit of white, and it was stick­ing straight up, kind of like an early Johnny Cash) was hold­ing up a young por­cu­pine to bless a stack of money. I didn’t know that por­cu­pines were capa­ble of bestow­ing good luck, and I’d never seen one before, so that was cool. He was gone when it was my turn for some luck.

In La Paz, they’ve got these crazy mini-busses run­ning all around the city. It’s pretty crazy, but some­how no one gets hurt. The basic idea is a bus runs from point A to point B all day in the city. In front they have a sign say­ing the route they are going, and there is some­one, usu­ally a young guy, yelling out the win­dow what the var­i­ous stops are. He’s also respon­si­ble for tak­ing the money, which has always been 1 Bs, or $.125, as far as I’ve seen, but I’ve always been in the city. These guys will pull across three lanes of traf­fic to pick you up, if you make any motion towards them. I’ve seen them accel­er­ate around a stopped vehi­cle, only to pull right in front of the same vehi­cle to pick some­one up. Every­body honks (but not like in Peru), yet no one seems to get angry. Any bad dri­ving maneu­ver you can think of I’ve seen here, but I have yet to see an acci­dent. I think most of Latin Amer­ica has been like that — con­trolled chaos. I think it’s just that every­body is try­ing to make a liv­ing, so no one takes it per­sonal. Here is the key — peo­ple pay atten­tion. One of my last days in Seat­tle a young woman pulled right into my lane. I was watch­ing her (rid­ing a motor­cy­cle makes you a bet­ter dri­ver) and saw she didn’t even look — she just pulled over. She’s last about 10 min­utes in Latin Amer­ica (and right­fully so.)

As far as try­ing to make a liv­ing, these guys (well, gals mostly) work very hard at it. Peo­ple sell any and every­thing. There are peo­ple who set up booths in the street to sell only pens and pen­cils. Granted it was a wide vari­ety of Pens and Pen­cils, but still it was just those two things. I’ve seen peo­ple sell­ing just grapes, or just the fruit from a Prickly Pear Cac­tus, or, in one case, one par­tic­u­lar bag of potato chips. Some­one was swelling sheets of paper from a ream (among other stuff.) I don’t know how peo­ple make a liv­ing. Take my inter­net cafe, for exam­ple. It’s only 2 Bs an hour, or $.25. They’ve got 8 com­put­ers. If some­one is on those com­put­ers every minute they are open, they are only mak­ing $24 a day. Usu­ally they aren’t even a quar­ter full — so what does that mean — they make $6 a day. It’s the same for peo­ple sell­ing chicken for $1.25.

When I woke up today, I felt great. I didn’t sleep much, but that’s OK — it’ll make it eas­ier to sleep tonight. I hope, hope, hope I’m finally over my cold. I feel great, and only have a lit­tle bit of con­ges­tion. Noth­ing a cou­ple of days at the beach can’t cure. I wish I could say I like Bolivia more, now that I’m not sick, or as sick, but frankly, it’s kind of bor­ing. I’m hap­pier being here, but that would be true where ever I am, even in Magic Meat Land.

One of the things I wanted to see was a place, near my hotel, called the Witches Mar­ket. It was pretty inter­est­ing. One of the things they sell are dried llama/alpaca fetuses. It’s creepy see­ing 20 or 30 of those things in a bas­ket, just star­ing at you. I briefly thought about get­ting one for my sis­ter as a sou­venir, but it’s odd, and I don’t know what the import laws are on dried llama fetuses, and frankly, that’s not some­thing most peo­ple need. And even­tu­ally her cat would try to eat it.

One last ques­tion I have that I’m hop­ing some­one can answer — why does almost every­one on the planet have black hair. If you look at the native peo­ple in the Amer­i­cas, Asia, Africa, and Aus­tralia, all of them have (beau­ti­ful) jet black hair. Is it a dom­i­nant gene? The only place I can think of that doesn’t have exclu­sively black hair is Europe, who’s spread to other parts of the world through con­quest, etc. But how did non-black hair get cre­ated? My though is that peo­ple moved north out of Africa, and as they moved north, even­tu­ally lost the need for pig­ment in their skin, which affected skin and hair. But that the­ory only works with the Scan­di­na­vian peo­ple. Parts of Japan, Rus­sia, Canada and the US all have peo­ple who lived very far north for a long time. Was it that they just weren’t there long enough to lose pig­men­ta­tion? The most cur­rent and pop­u­lar the­ory has the Amer­i­cas pop­u­lated for only 20,000 years. I imag­ine that mov­ing out of Africa to the Nordic coun­tries hap­pened a long time before that, so maybe that explains it. I really want to know. I’ve always thought that the jet black hair peo­ple have is just the most beau­ti­ful thing in the world, and I wish I had it. Then again, any color other than gray would be OK by me.

Men from Den­mark make me feel short. Bastards.