Campo Envy

It is the December meeting of a group of our socias (clients) in the community of Ravelo, a two-hour drive via a feo road of dust and rocks clattering over steep, crumbling edges. Our tin box jeep is a Suzuki Samurai with the shocks of a tricycle and the back door held together with a clever knot of the only seat belt and part of the tire jack. I feel like I’m in a pinball machine. And the sensation of dirt between my teeth and my telescoping spine gets old after, oh, 15 minutes. But the town is beautiful, sparsely tucked under an expanse of purple mountains and washed out sky. It looks like the pueblo I imagined living in before site assignments.

The meeting is underway. Having stuttered out my part, I am examining the mud and straw-thatched roof of the room we are in thinking, this is where Chagas disease comes from. The socias are signing their guarantee of the women in their solidarity group, surrounded by children who shuffle restlessly and drift in and out of the room with the dust particles. One child stays the whole time. He constantly has a smile on his face but amuses himself by covering his ears and screaming every ten minutes. It’s unnerving. “Smiles” steals a 1 Bs. coin during the loan disbursement, which no one notices until he swallows it and promptly vomits. I start to panic because I don’t know if you can perform the Heimlich on a two-year old, but just then he swallows the pesito completely and starts bawling. I go home and Google `toddler heimlich maneuver´. This is my “analysis” for the diagnostic report we´re assigned our first 3 months; tagging along with the folks of Pro Mujer and talking to every socia in the campo that will humor me. In 20 dusty courtyards or adobe rooms I have conversations that usually go as follows -

Me: Do you keep any record of the potatoes and corn you sell? Socia: Where are you from, Japan?
M: I am from the U.S., but my parents were born in China. How far do you have to travel to sell your vegetables?
S: Depends, sometimes far. Japan is pretty far, isn´t it?

Sometimes the women even give us fruit, pastries of fried goodness, or refrescos (warmish corn porridge drink with little black specks of suspiciousness, or a neon soda that tastes like carbonated liquid jello). I miss these long days of travel to and from the communities, getting stuck in storms, daydreaming in each town about where I would live if it were my site. The last month I’ve been office-bound, turning my surveys into something measurable. Outside my non-ergonomic holding cell, December passed with another B43 volunteer resignation and a temporary evacuation of our Santa Cruz volunteers when the military took over a few towns to keep rioters from burning the houses of MASistas (political party of Evo Morales). The protest is over the November approval of an article that allows constitutional reform by simple majority of the Constituent Assembly (MAS is 54% of the CA).

Not to be outdone by the cambas, last week Cochabamba marched in a few thousand cocaleros and informally ousted its Autonomía-friendly governor, Manfred Reyes Villa, when he tried to force a revote on the referendum for autonomy. This week marked the Morales administration´s 1-year anniversary, B43’s 5th month, and the arrival of the new bottom rung, B44, in Cochabamba.

FUN FACT/QUOTE OF THE DAY: Bringing large amounts of toilet paper on the bus can be considered cocaine paraphernalia during drug check stops.