WARMI

My new job is amazing. It´s not with the abuse victim center, but with WARMI, a youth center and daycare connected to an autonomous female microbusiness that produces soap. I´m working with both halves- supporting the women by helping them expand their market, connecting them with other autonomous businesses and such, and working in the library of the youth center encouraging literacy amongst the little ones and the teens. For the little ones we have made a giant map of South America for them to travel across with every book they read, and for the older ones we have started a book club. Everyone who works at WARMI (Quechua for ¨woman¨) is amazing, and all the kids (all 150 plus of them) are super sweet and enthusiastic and well behaved, which is somewhat astounding to me after years of working with rather angry little ones on the Lower East Side and outside of Buenos Aires.

I had forgotten how instant the gratification can be working with kids. I´ve been trying my whole life to work with adults and on big social problems but I always seem to end up coming back around to kids. And it´s a relief, just now. To be reminded that with these little ones, if I teach them how to solve a math problem, I´ve actually taught them how to do something. And if I tell them what an awesome job they´re doing (Bolivia is not big on positive reinforcement or workplace praise) they remember. And they catch me going out the door, awkward and blinking after 3 hours of translating, and point me out to their parents and I mumble something incoherent back. But it´s really nice, for just now.

Anyhow, it´s great and now I almost wish I could stay.

On a side note, a few remarkable things that Bolivia has to offer:

Drive through liquor stores (that will open your drinks for you through your car windows)

Bras utilized as bags to carry nearly anything a cholita could need, capacity depending on breast size

Syringes, needles and all, filled with ink and sold to refill printer cartridges

Cars that managed to fail emissions tests in other countries and were sent here, where, in order to put the steering wheel on the correct side of the car, everything was ripped out and moved over, leaving huge gaping holes in front of the passenger seat in most taxis

A totally Bolivian lexicon to be played with and enjoyed. Probably one of things I will miss most about Latin America in general

Dance music for every occasion

Oh those long stretches of the earth seen through the bus windows

Carnival!

Bolivia has transformed this month, which I usually hate, into one long glorious celebration. I have had confetti on my head, a drink in my hand, and a foot on the dance floor for the last two weeks straight. First we celebrated conpadres at a fellow intern's home:

Then, a week later, conmadres with my host sister and her friends:


And this week two days of national holidays, water fights, koas, and parties:


Of course the really big deal was Carnival itself, for which we went to Oruro. I sincerely tried to find out some things about about the festival in order to further our collective education, things like, why is it celebrated and how is it related to the specific dances and how do the various countries relate and what does it all mean? But no one seems to have concrete answers to any of these questions.

In Bolivia, Carnival is largely an Andean cultural celebration, loosely concealed under Catholic pretexts. Oruro hosts the biggest celebration in Bolivia, probably one of the largest in the world. Eight days of festivities (we stayed three), hundreds of bands made up of hundreds of musicians, over 350,000 dancers. Folks prepare for years to dance in Carnival, saving money to cover the massive band, costume, and entrance fees. UNESCO declared the festival a part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. It's totally gorgeous, amazing, chaos. Insanity composed of water balloons, foam spray, masses, beer by the bucket load, urine, mud, noise, colors. The main dances are corporales, tinku, morenada, and the diablada. There were also some fat bear dancer sections and an amazonian set. The dancers come through in groups along with the bands, which are equally famous, and the crowds stick briefly to dancing instead of conducting war with each other. The dancers pass by continuously from 10am saturday till 10 at night sunday, pausing at sunrise sunday morning to dance into the main church and kneel. At night the devils danced through walls of fire.