I
can’t believe I only have three weeks left in Bolivia! I already have every
weekend planned out until I go home (and every weekend at home planned out
until I head to Stanford!). I’m excited to go back, but I will also definitely
miss people and certain aspects of the culture here. As I get ready to head
back to the US, I have been thinking about the things that I’m looking forward
to and the things that I could do without. So, here’s my condensed list:
Bolivia – The Good:
A couple of weeks ago Pope Francis came to
Bolivia, and I was able to see him and attend a mass that he presided at! Some
of my fellow volunteers and I camped out for almost 24 hours before the mass to
try to get good spots (which kind of worked, and we were interviewed 8 times
along the way!). Anyway, the pope’s homily sums up what I think is one of the
best aspects of Bolivia. He says that it has become more common in our world to
discard “all those who are ‘unproductive,’ unsuitable, or unworthy, since
clearly those people don’t ‘add up’.” Many Americans, myself included, are
often times so focused on productivity that they forget to make time for
people, to stop and ask someone that looks down how they are doing, and really
want an honest answer. In contrast, in Bolivia, it is not uncommon for an event
to start two or three hours late, but this is partly because people and
conversations are emphasized much more than productivity and efficiency. Pope
Francis also said in his homily that “The greatest wealth of a society is
measured by the lives of its people.” Most Bolivians understand and live out
this statement much more fully than most Americans. Bolivia has taught me so
much about the worth of everyone and focusing more on people, and this is
something that I want to remember and try to live out as I go back to the US.
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| Camping out for the pope! (after getting kicked out the first time, before getting kicked out the second time) |
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| I pulled a Zacchaeus and climbed a tree, but luckily we got in after this, so I could see the pope without having to be in a tree |
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| Oh hey there Papa Francisco! |
My time here in Bolivia has made me so
grateful to have had the opportunity for the education that I have received. I
mostly help the older girls with homework, and many times they have
“investigaciones,” or research, where they need to use the internet to look up
something to complete their homework. However, although this is good practice
to get them acclimated with computers, the extent of the research is either to
copy and paste an article to print out (usually so they can then copy it in
their notebooks later) or to print out large quantities of pictures, many times
representations of different holidays, which have to be big and use excessive
amounts of ink and paper so that they can paste them in their big notebooks, or
archivadores. Because of the way the education system works, the most original
writing that the girls ever have to do (at least through high school that I
have seen) is a couple of sentences on short-answer questions. During my first
couple of months here, when I was helping the girls write an “essay” and saw
them just copy and paste sections of different essays they found on the
internet to create “their own” essay, I thought they were cheating and would
get in trouble. But I have realized since then that this is how the education
in Bolivia (or at least in Montero works), and there isn’t any sort of
copyright law. I was definitely never grateful for this in school, but I can
honestly say I’m thankful for all of the essays and copyright policies in
school, because it helped me learn so much and be able to form original and
educated thoughts and ideas based on research, which is much harder for the
girls because they have no practice. This is one of the things that we were
warned about during orientation that we would get frustrated with, because it’s
not possible for a few American (and German) volunteers to come to Bolivia and
change the whole education system, even if it were a good idea to do it.
Bolivia – The Ugly:
Another warning we received during
orientation was that every female volunteer that has gone to Bolivia has been
sexually harassed in some way because of how dominant males are in society (aka
machismo). Of course we were no exception, mostly through excessive amounts of
catcalling while we were walking down the street throughout the year, but there
were also times when the men were more inappropriate. Although we are by no
means perfect in this regard in the U.S., women definitely have more respect
there than they do here, which I am looking forward to returning to.
Obviously there are multiple good and bad
aspects of both cultures, but I chose to highlight these three because they affected
me a lot in my time here. I am so thankful to have been able to fully
experience Bolivian culture by calling it my home for a year, and I’m sure
there are many aspects of life here that I won’t fully appreciate until I have
returned to the US and realized how different things are.
PS. Because your 15th birthday is
considered your “coming-of-age” in Latin America, this past weekend we took all
of the girls that turned 15 this year on a trip to Samaipata, a nearby town in
the mountains with pre-Incan ruins and really pretty waterfalls! The girls had
a lot of fun, even though we had to walk for an hour-and-a-half up the mountain
in the drizzling rain with our luggage to get there because heavy rainstorms
had washed out part of the road earlier in the week. But once we got there it
was awesome! That's all for now. Hasta luego!
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| Walking up the mountain past the road block |
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| See that tiny gray blob on the rock at the top of the waterfall? That's me! |
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| The girls with their birthday cake! |
