Hay que...

Friends,

I’ve recounted how my experience has been overwhelming, bone-breaking (those of you that did a little research on Denguito recognize the entendre) and challenging in that crazy –this is Rachel thriving- way. I’ve forgotten to relay the awes, smiles, laughs and jokes that allow me to experience myself and my world in ways different than my previously known expression. Basically I think about leaving this job because it’s crazy and unfair. But when I realize leaving this job would mean leaving so many people and places and interactions I now know and love, I stop with such thinking.

This could just be the roller coaster speaking but ya gotta know that I love this place. I love every crazy thing that happens and how my mind has become so crazed and so accustomed to every roll that comes. At this moment in time I understand Bolivian logic (or logical American working in Bolivia) better than I understand Obama’s race and USofA’s recession.

I almost got deported on Friday night. No joke. The streets were processing Jesus’s crucifixion. There was this roof, there were Mike and I exploring the wrong place at the wrong time, unidentified and apparently in the end on my part, undocumented as a working citizen. After hours and hoops and bureaucracy and lots of Bolivians coming to my rescue, the police were still pretty set on me being “irregular.” You never ever think in a crazy country like this that a meeting with the police could ever lead to anything more than a sweet little cash-money exchange. I was joking with the Interpol police that deal with foreigners about computer solitaire, Mike wanted to order our new friends a round of pizza, I was whistling… anywhooo the deal is that I won’t write too many more details here. Something happened, or rather didn’t happen, with my visa. I’m not really sure my stance yet but Monday morn at 9 am I’ll be chilling with these police again. Hopefully I’ll be staying in this country and continuing with my work and continuing to not flinch at well ANYTHING (that is until I have time to process and then just flinch uncontrollably at inappropriate times…but will whistle when it’s all over, so it’s ok).

Well back to my good news: I’m basically here in an audition to be Ms. Indiana Jones. Not Indiana Jones’ Mrs. because that would be incredibly unsatisfying and genderingly limited. I want to be (and based on my adventures thus far I might already be) living the tales of Indiana Jonesina. i just have to figure out how to wear white in dusty situations and not get dirty. Thus far I’m a big failure at this.

Why do I love Bolivia and why to the American Docs that meet me here think that I have gone crazy (ie. “gone Bolivian")?

Exhibit A: The other day I was in a taxi with three volunteers. We were stopped in traffic when suddenly something forceful and loud collided into the back end of the car. From my position I couldn’t see anything but a helmet peaking over the trunk of the vehicle. The doctor volunteer in the front seat put her hands to her head and shouted fearfully “OH Shit!” The loud noise seemed to be getting louder and louder and a forceful contact with the car became constant. The taxi driver didn’t seem affected and the two other volunteers to my right side didn’t seem to know what was going on. Processing all of this information my mind immediately jumped to the following conclusion: A helmeted man with a chainsaw is currently stealing our bumper. We are stopped in traffic. I am in Bolivia. This is an unguarded vulnerable bumper moment. The taxi driver must just know this happens and must also know that you don’t mess with helmeted chainsaw men; One should probably just let them do their thing. I figured I should probably follow the taxistas lead and stay calm and stay put. Then the chain saw noise got louder and louder and my mind jumped to “uh oh I think something from the backside of our taxi is going to blow up… I am getting out of the taxi NOW! I exited the taxi to learn that a helmeted man on a Moto had crashed his motorcycle under our car, he was still on the moto with the motor running. Essentially helmeted man was being rammed further and further underneath the car. In the end: The moto man was ok. He was wearing a helmet which is really really amazing because usually the riders of motos are 12 day old babies, Cholitas (indigenous women in skirts) barely holding on, and a young teenage boy driver, all of whom are unhelmeted. Anyways we helped Moto man out from under the car, turned off his motor, asked him if he was ok and stood back while he gathered himself, turned back on his Moto and sped off through traffic.

Exhibit B: Most things in Bolivia take a really really really long time to do. Akin to me unexplainably almost getting deported on Friday, Bolivia is really wound in bureaucracy hierarchy authoritarianism and corruption. Anywhoo it usually a little bit annoys me when I have to go pay a bill at a hospital and it ends up taking 4 hours because I have to visit 10 offices, sometimes the same office two or three times, to receive signatures, stamps, photocopies, seals.. etc etc.. to get the authorization to get the confirmation that I paid a freakin bill. Oh yeah and throughout all of this you have to have connections and make friends, or your stamps and line waiting and time will be worth NOTHING.

Anywhooo… every once in a while things in Bolivia work out just perfectly and I couldn’t be more delighted. Like day when my horn on the SUV broke and I was bummed because driving without a horn here is pretty much impossible. Anywhoo I was told to find an electrista so Mike did that but they told him it was cost $60 American dollars and we’d have to come back after lunch. I don’t have too many hours in city before I take off for campo life again so I decided to look for a different electrista. I went driving down the car repair street looking for the appropriate store. A dude caught my eye and looked excited to help me so I pulled over. I told him about the horn, I popped the engine, he fiddled with some things, ran off to get a fuse, did some stuff with copper wire, replaced a part, Honk HONk and five Bolivianos later and I was on my way. This same day I needed to get a key copied and also not knowing where to do this started wandering a random block for a key copying place. I walked past this tiny greasy man working next to a tiny greasy wooden tool box. I noticed underneath some more grease a “I Copy Keys" sign.” This time 4 Bolivianos and 2 minutes later I had my new copied key. He copied it by hand so I was skeptical but still pretty stoked.

Moral of the story: The key worked fabulously. So don’t be skeptical by a greasy man a hand made sign and a moment when u give the man the original key and he starts to search through a box of a million unlabeled already cut other keys and u think he’s gonna lose it or just sell u some random other key and very possibly have mixed up your original key with the others.

The horn sounded fabulous at first but in the end didn’t work out so splendidly. On my two hour drive to the Campo the horn honked like a dream. I was delighted and certainly honking it up. A few days later there was a small fire underneath the trunk where the motor and fuse box live and after some confusion and non-functioning horns, lights and other things… we discovered that all the cables connected to the fuse box had been burnt threw and threw. We were out in the middle of nowhere as always but luckily two nice clinic patients did some burnt wire cutting and not burnt wire taping and with this temp job we made it back to the city safe and sound. The bill at the car dealership to fix this mess was $70. Soooo street electristas are cute but they are all about sketchy recreated bad fuses with copper wire. I still think 5 Bs was a sweet deal though.

Exhibit C: could be the 22 hour bus ride I just took to nowhere (well to somewhere) to wait all night in a huge line of semis and double decker buses to realize at the break of dawn there was a gigantic irreparable gaping hole in the road that because we were in the middle of no where would not be repaired any time soon. My first thought (cuz I still am American) was to turn around (admit defeat and go the 8 hrs back to the city). Not a Bolivian in the 3 miles of cars blocked up on either side shared this idea. Instead a bunch of men went to work with machetes to cut down the forest that surrounded the hole on each side to create a new road. This new pathway worked for about three gigantic semis packed with a herd of 20 cows each.. and then the new road looked about the same as the gigantic hole we began with. But again, stress, frustration, fear, no need. These situations are my favorite where I can hop out of my car or my double decker bus to survey the situation, chat with the people, stand and be with my hands on my hips (just like my Dad always did in any obstacle situation). Phew…..

I could go on and on. Do I have flawed logic? The Americans (you inlcuded) think so. I survive here and learn and enjoy through it. I stress only in the actual non stressful situations. Like when I get annoyed with American doctors or think I work too much or work all day (which sometimes includes sitting with caskets of patients that didn’t make it through surgery) and then come home to questions like “What are we gonna do for dinner?” It’s a strange life. But it’s an ok one. When they tell me they are gonna deport me… I don’t believe them.. or at the very least I feel like in some screwy way there will be some line-waiting, wire taping, smile because u learn to love the absurdity, way to keep the adventures coming.