BOLIVIA JOURNAL - 2007

Bolivia Thus Far (February 10, 2007)

The flight down was very smooth, though we took a red-eye so the first couple of days were a very weary few. During orientation, many of us were a bit sick from the travel and cultural adjustments, but we are all doing well now. There are twenty-five kids in my program, twenty of which are girls. So I guess you could say I’m one of the lucky few guys! Most of the kids are pretty chill, and most are from small "hippy" liberal arts schools like Vassar, Barnard, etc. They’re good people. Cochabamba is a very relaxed, laid back city. The people are some of the friendliest I’ve ever met and the weather is about a constant seventy degrees (they call it the city of eternal spring). Everything is very cheap here. I can get pretty much any food or drink I want for less than five dollars. A fancy dinner with some good wine might cost ten dollars. It’s one dollar for every eight Bolivianos. And the food is damn good here too. There are so many wandering, homeless dogs, which you can hear congregating at night. They call them vagabondes. I’m thinking of maybe doing an abstract short film about them. I brought my brand new Canon GL2 camera. The main film I’m trying to make is about the small Jewish community in Cochabamba. I’m interested in how they negotiate the dual identity of Bolivian and Jew, two identities that don’t exactly go hand in hand.

The Second Coming (February 28, 2007) I love my home stay family. There are five kids, two abuelitas (grandmas) – one of them is ninety-nine years old. Camila, the three-year old grandkid, is the cutest. I play hide and seek with her all the time (a funny image, I know). The house is an old-style, hacienda-type house, with bedrooms that flank a central courtyard. I’m a huge fan of the hacienda style, as I can enjoy the nice weather even when inside. Overall, the house is always full of life and it gives me many opportunities to practice Spanish (which is improving, but still needs work).

The program here is very time-consuming, with seven hours of class a day, so I don’t have that much free time. However, we did take a group trip last week to the infamous CARNAVAL in Oruro. I was pretty inebriated the whole time, soaking in the revelry of almost twenty hours of parading, including traditional Bolivian dancers and music from across the country.

After Oruro, we hit up La Paz, the world’s highest capital city. This city is unlike any I have ever seen, literally built into the mountains at 12,000 feet in the sky. It seems to be filled with half Bolivian businessmen and half indigenous Aymara market vendors. Its streets are some of the most colorful, smelly, and culturally distinct ones I have ever observed.

Finally, we saw a concert in El Alto, a heavily indigenous sprawling slum-city above La Paz. We watched some psychedelic folkloric Bolivian band play, followed by an indigenous rapper freestlying in Aymara, one of the indigenous languages in the area. My group knew that I had a freestyle or two up my sleeve, so they prodded me to go onstage and I proceeded to battle this guy - Aymara vs. English. If that wasn’t crazy enough, it turns out this concert was on Bolivian radio!

Part Three (April 16, 2007) We had a few other excursions after La Paz, the highlight being the old mines of Potosí, the highest city in the world and, at one time, one of the richest in the world for its silver mines. It’s said that they could have built a bridge of silver from Bolivia to Spain with all the silver they extracted from the mines in Potosi. Bolivia has a sad history of exploitation by European powers and the US, but I wont get into that right now.

We also all spent a week living in separate adobe shacks in the Bolivian countryside. My house there had no electricity, and only recently received a waterspout via the efforts of a US NGO. I have never eaten so many potatoes in my life, as the countryside of Bolivia lives off the potato. I also have never seen such an amazing array of stars. The week in the countryside left me shower-less, filled with fleas, and really tanned. I will never forget my family there, asking me questions like, "Is the sky the same in the United States?" The mother did not speak Spanish, only Quechua, one of the indigenous languages spoken in the countryside.

Fourth Time Around (June 16, 2007) My program ended about a month ago, and my parents came to visit right as the program was ending. We headed out of Cochabamba and traveled through some of Bolivia: Sucre, La Paz and Lake Titicaca. After that, we headed to Machu Pichu and, really, none of the pictures do it justice. Its one of the most inspiring places I’ve ever been, even just to wonder how a society could have picked such an incredibly beautiful place to live. I recommend everyone gets to see this wonder at least once in their life, if you weren’t already planning on going.

Next was Buenos Aires... first of all, let me all tell you how in shock I was (I couldn’t really come to terms with myself for two days or so). Driving into Buenos Aires from the airport was like driving into some sort of super-clean, ultra-modern first world utopia after spending so long in Bolivia. Being in Buenos Aires really gave me some perspective on my time in Bolivia, and how "underdeveloped" Bolivia really is. After catching a tango show and a Boca Juniors soccer match at the world famous La Bombonera, my parents and I toured the city for a few days, ending with a gigantic serving of the best steak I’ve ever eaten (and in comparison to the US, so damn cheap).

My parents left after about 5 days in Buenos Aires and headed back to the states. After they left, I decided to stick around Buenos Aires. I stayed in a couple different hostels, spoke a lot of English and met people traveling from all around the world. Buenos Aires is a huge, cosmopolitan city that can sometimes get overwhelming. But all in all, I’m a huge fan of the Porteño culture, which is one steeped in perfectionism, vanity, and cafe culture. I had an adventure-filled journey back from Buenos Aires to Cochabamba. I tried to take as many trains as I could, since I’m a fan, but many of the train routes have been sold off to private companies and are now not functional. I played music with some Argentine hippies on one of the trains, hitchhiked with a couple from Rosario, made empanadas with a family in the northern city of Jujuy, and talked about ancient religious philosophy with a Bolivian indigenous man named Inti (sun in Quechua) on the train from the Argentinian border into Bolivia.

5th Time’s A Charm (August 3, 2007) After my first journey outside of Bolivia, I became much more focused on my documentary when I got back. I began an intense shooting and research schedule. I also realized how important this project has been for me - not only as my first really extensive film project, but an important step in the identity search that all of us have come to call life. My genuine interest and willingness to work around the clock tells me that filmmaking is what I want to pursue. Who would have thought I would come to Bolivia and become so interested in Judaism? I received a grant from my school to continue work on the project – I think ill extend my flight and should be back in Chicago by August 25.