On This Easter Weekend

On this Easter Weekend,

I am living in the South Zone of Cochabamba, Bolivia, near the Alalay Lagoon, and this Friday after attending the veneration of the Cross at the Mass of our local church, I walked up the hill in our neighborhood with other members of my church, in the procession that enacted the stations of the Cross. In this picture you can see one of the electrical towers on the hill above me as they appear from my back yard.




When I left Cochabamba last June, I felt that as a visitor to the city, I had seen all that the city had to offer. I knew by heart the main avenues and plazas, had discovered my favorite restaurants, and had visited the main attractions. As an outsider or tourist, I knew the city. But upon our return, we have become residents of the city. We live in a neighborhood in the South Zone, reputedly the poorest part of town, but somehow our neighborhood has its own beauty, well-tended parks and new covered canchas where the children can play soccer, basketball, or volleyball, or the families can gather for socializing. The existence of so many canchas demonstrates Bolivia’s acknowledgement that sun here is dangerous for all during the daytime. A new high school named October 24 (the date of President Evo Morales’ birthday) is just up the street from our small house, and just around the corner is the Cochabamba home of Evo himself.

It is a new Cochabamba for us. Our current home was the former home of the Maryknoll missioners, Evan and Susan Cuthbert, and their daughters Mary and Rose, who have returned to Boston after six years of service. We knew them as we know most of the Maryknoll missioners—they came to events at the Maryknoll Language Institute, and Evan planned the Maryknoll students’ trip to Chapari, a major coca-growing region in Bolivia (along with the Nor Jungas, where we lived before moving here) and the jungle region of Bolivia, as the Chapari River is a tributary of the Amazon.

The home and yard are models of ecological sustainability, with a thriving vegetable garden, covered by netting to offset the Bolivian sun, an ample compost pit, rain barrels, and a grassy yard with lantana, large geraniums, bougainvilleas, a lilac bush, herbs (sage, basil, anise, and rosemary), and a grapevine growing on the lattice over the patio. We also enjoy the pacai tree, which provides shade and pacai for those who enjoy this kind of fruit. On the Dia de los Niños (Children’s Day), the owners of our house came with their children and nephew to harvest the picai. We were honored to be a part of their celebration and know that the picai would be enjoyed by others. Here is one shot of our yard.

We have added rose bushes, impatiens, vincas, and daisies. Unlike Nora’s rose bushes, our roses have not been besieged by aphids, but by the strong cutter ants, who had stolen our rose petals to decorate their own homes. Somehow, with a little incentive to go elsewhere—yes, we did sprinkle some offsetting granules of, yes, ant poison around our rose bushes—the colony moved to the other side of our yard where they live in harmony with us and the rose bushes.
Truly, we had moved into a place where we could enjoy the beauty of Cochabamba, the city of eternal spring, and live in a Bolivian neighborhood with people from all economical and educational levels.

a flowering aloe plant in our yard

We are regulars at the tiendas on our street—where we buy milk, bread, eggs, butter, and cokes, a popular drink here in Bolivia. We buy meat from a woman who sells chicken and beef until noon, or we can buy pork chops or chicken from Sofia, the large vendor about three blocks away. If we walk just a few blocks, past the new high school, cancha, and park, we can select our fruits and vegetables from an array of fresh produce. This tienda is on one of the main avenues of our neighborhood (the avenue is not paved, but the dusty roads made of stones serve the buses and taxis well). On the next corner is the hardware store, which has supplied us with shovels, light bulbs (florescent ones, of course), and the hose and piping we have needed to connect the water from our underground water tank to the tank above our house. Joel has made friends with the family who runs the hardware store.

Around that corner is the neighborhood Catholic Church, run by the La Salette missionaries from La Salette, France. Padres Juan Francisco and David are the accessible priests there, along with Brother Adrien. Three orders of sisters serve this parish—sisters of St. Joseph, sisters of Santisimo, and the Maryknolls. Joel and I are teaching English classes to the St. Joseph and Santisimo sisters, who live close to the central church. I work in the tutoring center every morning from ten until twelve with one of the Maryknoll sisters, Maggie (originally from Tanzania). Maggie and her fellow sister, Lil (originally from Louisville, Kentucky), along with my language school partner, Minh, live in what was once the priests’ house next to the chapel, Exultación, which is one of the two satellite chapels of the La Salette parish. It was with the people of this parish that I climbed to the top of the hill that arches over my own backyard, when I walked the via cruces (stations of the cross) with my fellow parishioners on Friday afternoon, after the 3:00 veneration of the Cross service.

I am immersed in the social life of my neighborhood. Working with the children in the tutoring center, teaching (along with Joel) the two orders of sisters who are obligated to learn English, as well as attending early weekday Masses at the parish church and having breakfast with the sisters and priests afterwards on Wednesdays, I know that I have meaningful work to perform even if there is a blockade or transportation strike. But I still have work to do outside the neighborhood.

I work with the internados (inmates) at the prison El Abra, which means “the clearing,” on Thursday and Friday afternoons. Joel and I teach English classes for two hours each day, using the library as our media room and the church as our classroom. The library was created when Father Mike Johnson, now the pastor at St. Camillus Church in Silver Springs, Maryland, was there in 2000-2006.We have eighteen students, although on a typical day, ten will show up for class. We attended Easter Mass at the prison.

I also work in the theology library at the pastoral juvenil, the college campus ministry office in Cochabamba, very close to San Simon, a large university in Bolivia. The students at the juvenile have welcomed me into their community. To show them my gratitude for all their conversation and for sharing in their worship services (always original, reverent, and relevant), I brought them two apple pies last week. We polished these off with dispatch, and I hope to bring fudge pies the next time. (Pie crusts cook well at a higher altitude, or at least that is my theory.)
These students are not necessarily preparing to be sisters, nuns, or priests. They are studying in many different disciplines: orthodontics, medicine, communication, and engineering, for example. But they are serious about serving Christ in their careers, and have dedicated themselves to lives of service. In this sense, and in many other ways, they remind me of the EVM students (exploration of vocational ministry) when I was an intern chaplain at Furman University, who, like the students in Cochabamba, see their lives as mission, regardless of which career they choose to enter. They are the Church.

Likewise, all the missioners, priests, brothers, and sisters who surround Joel and me in our life here in Cochabamba, in our neighborhood, in the rural areas, and in the city, have provided a sense that God’s kingdom is growing incrementally. As one of the padres here has told me, the goal of the missionaries in Latin America is to understand the needs and wants of the people here, and address those needs as well as we can, and to understand that it is only in the moment, with the person in front of us, that we see Christ. This reminds me of the perspective of Mother Teresa, whose vision was always directed to the individual in front of her, but it also reminds me of the famous prayer of the Archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero, martyred in 1980:

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the kingdom lies beyond us.
No statement says all that can be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection. No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the church’s mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
That is what we are about:
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will lead to further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is the beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for
God’s grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are the workers, not master builders, ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.

A Reflection on Family Reunions

Festival Weekend in Carmen Pampa: Family Reunion

This mother lives in Carmen Pampa,
And her children live in Caranavi.
To me, she is the mother who comes to the children’s library
when it is closing.
She seeks books for her children,
who live far away from her.
She wants them to dream of worlds other than their own.

On this day, her son, the eldest, who wears glasses,
can hold onto this woman who brings him books,
Whose love reaches him over the mountains
when they are apart—
The daughter, too, molds her body to her mother’s, absorbing strength and love.
This weekend will be long, and it stretches before them
like a parade of dancers-- never-ending.

The father is not here.
Perhaps he has to work in Caranavi,
As the mother has to work in Carmen Pampa.
There are no harsh words in this family,
no recriminations,
even if the parents no longer know one another.

I only know that that the children and their mother
meld into a family of three, the touch of the children
reminding her of all those days that
stretch behind her as the weekend is spread out before them,
a glorious banquet where all may love one another
as much as they want, until the moment of return
to separate lives,
where children return to their schools, and parents return to work,
when a mother thinks about which books her children would enjoy.

My husband is shooting the picture.
He is a father, and his children are far away.
I am a mother, and I am looking at the picture.
I have been in this photo,
my children so young and close to me,
my husband taking the picture.

I always bought my children books
And took them to libraries.
Now that I am far away from my child,
I look at pictures and think about the books she is reading.

I cannot send my son books now, but I know that
Because I bought him books, some of which he did not read,
He knew that I wanted him to live in other places-- not just Tennessee.

This reunion is short.
But the children will carry their books back to Caranavi,
and smile as they dream of their return.

Intercarreras and Goodby to UAC-Carmen Pampa

We are leaving Carmen Pampa, where we had anticipated that we would stay for the entire three years of mission. However, considering all the variables, our organization, FMS, and we decided that we should return to Cochabamba to serve in the urban ministry there. I want to take this time in my blog to highlight those major events that I both witnessed and took part in at this Unidad Academica Campesina, UAC, one branch campus of the Catholic University of Bolivia.

The Intercarreras, which means “between the majors” (carrera also means "race"), was the university's celebration of the school’s anniversary. Each one of the six majors here, including pre-university, competed in sports (volleyball, futbol [soccer], and basketball [women’s]), theatre, karaoke, and dance (both traditional Bolivian dance and modern). The loud cheering of the students for their own teams in the competitions reminded me of high school pep rallies, with gigantic banners and each group donning its carrera colors.

I was surprised by the intensity of the competition, as well as unprepared for the way that it would pre-empt classes. As I mentioned in the previous blog, one of my classes was cancelled because students had to select their carrera’s Mr. and Ms. Carmen Pampa candidates. Students missed classes so that they could go to skit and dance practice. I myself rushed into class one day after a strenuous forty-five minute dance practice (I danced the morenada, a dance that involved just a few variations of dance steps, designed in terms of costume and exertion for young to middle-aged women). Arriving afterwards in the classroom, I not only looked disheveled-- had been pulled away from my class preparation in order to practice the dance--my my brain was disheveled.

Everything stopped the Wednesday of the week of the anniversary celebration. All students, faculty, and staff were mandated to attend the official opening of the new women’s dorm. The area in front of the dorm, and behind our apartment, had been newly grated and graveled. The perfectly landscaped dorm shone in its pristine beauty. After many speeches, some Afro-Bolivian music, and a play that dramatized the plight of the poor, Andean student who was welcomed with open arms and a beca (scholarship) into the university, many of the participants danced in the hot sun, glad that they could celebrate the bounty represented by the new building, provided for the most part by USAID (Aid from the United States). After the celebration, all of us in the audience were able to troop into the new dorm to see for ourselves the dormitory rooms, shining bathrooms, and study rooms. All the women living on the upper campus would live in the new residence, which would open up more room for all and enable more students to come to Carmen Pampa.

The Minister of Coca, a dignitary from USAID, another dignitary, and Padre Freddy, president of UAC-Carmen Pampa, perform the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

All of us listening to the speeches during the ceremony. If you enlarge this, read the sign about campesino education and note that I am standing up against the wall.

A dramatic reenactment of two parents learning that their daughter will be able to attend college at UAC-Carmen Pampa.

Afro-Bolivian musicians and dancers.

Joel took this picture of me with his students Elizabeth and Nieves, who have recently graduated.

The new women's dorm

Padre Israel, on the right, touring the new dorm with the rest of us. Israel is a priest as well as a student in the agronomy department. He is a dedicated priest and a friendly, unassuming person.

Each night brought a new competition: drama, dance, and karaoke. The theme receiving most air play was violence in the home. Alcoholic fathers were the source of much of this violence, which reflected a significant social problem in Bolivia. The nursing students presented a satire on the cholitas in the marketplace. Although I couldn’t make out all of the language, I had been to the marketplace enough to laugh at the satire, one which I as a gringa would not dare to make.

A comedic skit about cholitas in the market.

The entire university was out in force for four days, From Thursday, September 30th (actually on the 29th, if one counts the “ribbon cutting” of the new dorm) until Sunday night, activities began at 7:00 a.m. and ran until 2:00 in the morning. There was a celebration of the transitus of St. Francis also, when all of us created a natural setting for the St. Francis statue, along with his dog (or domesticated wolf). Just before Mass, a hummingbird flew into the sanctuary and began drinking the nectar of the cut flowers that we had placed in the “woods” surrounding our saint. Joel took many pictures of the hummingbird, but in only photo is one able to see it easily.

The festival industry in Bolivia is a booming business. On the Sunday when we were to dance on the soccer field, all of us had paid for and donned our costumes. As a morenada dancer, I had a lot of trouble braiding my graying hair to complete my outfit (green polera skirt, lacy white blouse, green pointed high heels, dangling earrings, and the typical female bowler hat. A visiting friend of one of Joel’s students took me to the eco-tourism dorm to braid my hair, from scalp to tip of the hair. Using a lot of water, many little rubber bands, and finally putting the tassels at the end of my trenzas (braids), she became a very good friend in the meantime. We talked about the difference between her university experience in La Paz and her friend’s in the campo, as well as about our beliefs as Christians. She wanted to use her English, which was impeccable, and I was only too glad to listen to and talk with her.

Our dance began on the stony road in front of the church and proceeded to the soccer field. I danced with the school’s lawyer, the Columbian missionary Manuala, and Lucia, who worked in the main office, along with the school nurse/librarian Danny, the head of the organic gardening Rosemary, and my department head, Ximana. All of us were mutually supportive, dancing in very high heels on a road that I had difficulty walking on in my walking shoes. But on and on we danced, the force of peer pressure on another, and the all-for-one, one-for-all mentality. We looked pretty good, although one step continued to confuse me.

The whole school danced. Dancing was, it is true, mandatory, and all of us had to pay for our not-inexpensive uniforms, but it was with a sense of solidarity that staff, faculty, and students danced. Joel was the official photographer, and his pictures caught all of us in action, a bit winded, overheated, with blisters forming on our feet (mine remained there for a month), but grinning as we dipped, waved our hands, and swayed to and fro. I thought of the subversive nature of some of the native dances, the dances that depicted the enslavement of the African slaves brought to Bolivia, as well as the indigineous men and women forced to work for the Spanish. The rattles of the dancers stood for the clattering chains of the slaves, and the long tongues on the masks showed the slaves’ exhaustion. One costume of the male dancers was comprised of a series of decorative circles that completely hampered all movement except for the dancing of the feet. Other dances stemmed from the European heritage. My own costume was drawn from the costumes of the choleras of the Andes, the polera skirt being the same skirt worn by peasant women in Spain, and enforced on the indigenous women in the Andes. The bowler hat was a fashion foisted off on the women, and one part of my dance, which clashed crazily with the costume’s history, was my own fascination with my own jewelry (which I had failed to purchase or borrow). The women who danced this dance were wealthy women who had inherited the skirts of enslaved women, but whose lace and jewelry, along with the bowler hat, bespoke pride in wealth.

I am including other pictures of my friends, students, and colleagues, who also danced:

One of the children who visit our library, also the son of two faculty members.

Here are Carlos and Gladys, our upstairs neighbors. Both of them work for the university and have a toddler,

Our students in eco-tourism

,

Doctora Wendy, our campus physician,
on the left; Desiderio, professor in agronomy; and Ximena, head of eco-tourism.

Cheering students during the night competitions. As one might guess from the skeleton dressed in red, the color of the nursing major, these are the nursing students.

Modern dance also asserted itself in the later competitions. These young students are talented dancers!

After days of competing in sports, dance, theater, and karaoke (our major won in karaoke!), we had a lot of difficulty calming down from the festivities. It was only after the intercarreras Joel and I were caught in a blockade in La Paz and missed two weeks of classes. After three weeks of vacation, one could say, the two of us were able to resume our work in the classroom. Our students have now headed home for summer vacation, have gone to other universities for more school work, or are on the job market. The students in eco-tourism were a tight-knit , hard-working group, andwe hope to cross their paths in the future.

A Typical Atypical Day

A Typical Atypical Day
Today has been a typical atypical day. Joel and I went to bed the night before at 10:00, only to re-awaken about 2:30. We have a lot of things on our minds about our mission in Carmen Pampa, and of course, we spent a couple of hours talking. Joel took the initiative to cut up a pineapple, which, for once, was not over-ripe.

After awakening again at 8:00, I prepared my class and went down the hill to teach. I had my i-touch and speakers ready for student listening. I was also anticipating my students' book reports: we are reading children's books, like Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile, Mercer Mayer and Lillian Hoban books (illustrator of Bedtime for Frances). I was excited because one of my students was very interested in the witty writing of the Lyle, Lyle Crocodile book. All year, he has demonstrated a moderate interest, but when confronted with interesting twists on words, he had lit up with enthusiasm. So I walked into my classroom, anticipating another good class--Joel going up to the second floor to the language lab with his class and our fellow instructor Chris closing the door to his class room for second-year students. But where was my class? I looked at an empty room.

All semester there have been problems with class cancellation: the big celebration of the school's anniversary, called the intercarreras, the faculty retreat in the following week (which created a three-week hiatus between classes for my students in education), and numerous other events that pre-empted class: a birthday party for the head of the Eco-Tourism department, the dedication of a new building (which the student body and all faculty were obliged to attend), a lecture on bats (we had visiting scientists here at Carmen Pampa who were studying the numerous bats here), as well as compulsory campus cleanup days, and the election of Mr. and Ms. UAC (Unidad Academica Campesina--Carmen Pampa). I had recovered from the initial shock of class cancellations (once, 4 out of 7 classes cancelled), and our students, coming onto the end of the 20-week semester, were attending class in earnest, putting their academic work at the top of their list of priorities.After writing a note on the board, "All students will be counted absent today," followed by the date and my signature, I left the classroom after twenty minutes.

Walking back to the volunteer house, I saw two of our of guests sitting outside the church--our German volunteer, all of nineteen years old, had three guests for the week, a friend from high school, her mother, and the friend's Bolivian boyfriend. It struck me that I had the keys to the locked church that they were sitting outside of. So I offered to open the church to show them the Franciscan Church--the statue of Francis, the small fountain of water, which I couldn't turn on, the aguayo backdrop behind the hand-carved crucifix, and of course, the trip up to the bell tower, where a panoramic view could be enjoyed by all. No, it didn't stand up to the churches and spires of Germany, but it was in its own way erene and inspiring.

Then, I showed the small group our children's library, which is more like a childen's playhouse than a library. Now, it is very spic and span, after I washed the windows, walls, and curtains, and scrubbed down the table, chairs, and bench. Puzzles, games, crayons, and coloring books were stacked neatly on the small blue shelves against the wall. Later that day, Joel would be showing the movie Toy Story 3 on the homemade screen, while the children eat the popcorn that he made in the wee hours with our deluxe popcorn popper, along with the Tampico (a version of Tang in a bottle) he would buy for them, sitting on the large straw mats on the newly-created cement floor (thank you, José Tintaya!). The children would sit on the brightly colored mats that we had purchased two weeks ago in La Paz. I am told that sometimes there are 22 children in this space.

After serving as a tour guide for the first time, I gave our guests hugs as they departed by mini-van to Coroico, from which they would then travel to La Paz. The mother herself would be going on to Germany, while the daughter and her boyfriend would return to Cochabamba. I was glad that my day had not been wasted, that I had indeed occupied the role of a docent (from Merriam -Webster's 1 : a college or university teacher or lecturer 2 : a person who leads guided tours especially through a museum or art gallery).

Having asked Joel to take over my office hour for me (which I later found, was impossible because the office was locked), I packed up my mochila (backpack) and started up the hill. I was accompanied by Don Oscar, the head of community service on the lower campus [Manning], who told me that he actually lived in the house beside the coffee plantation (cafetal), along with his wife and three children, two of whom went to the elementary school that the Xavier brothers had founded in Carmen Pampa, the oldest of whom attending a high school in a nearby town.Bidding him good-bye at the cafetal, I continued to trudge up the hill at my own pace, walking by the state-of-the-art, cutting edge recycling center.

Suddenly at the head of the trail, I saw my class. I heard a gentle, "Oh NO . . . " emit from the female students. There was the other docente, the head of our eco-tourism department, leading my students from the upper campus (Leahy), where Joel and I live, down the path to the lower campus. It had been a field trip for the students! How nice! And the other docente had simply forgotten to inform me. Alas, there had been no transportation available or the students would have been back on the lower campus by 11:00 a.m., in time for class. After some teasing and a lot of reassurance that I wasn't angry, the tired crew proceeded down the hill.

I went on to my apartment. That morning, even before preparing my class, I had done what I typically do when I am a little depressed: I cleaned my apartment (which, by the way, is spotless as I type). I had deep-cleaned the bathroom, which resists cleanliness, mostly due to the shower that somehow leaks over the stall (the shower stall is the locale for washing all of our clothes) and the dust that collects in our apartment that is tracked into the bathroom onto the water throughout the space. As I came into the apartment, I attacked the dishes in the sink, took a shower (always has to be done after a walk up the hill), started another "load" of clothes in the shower stall, and decided to roast some raw peanuts for snacking.

I received a Skype call from Emer, which I certainly would have missed on a typical day. Her new family is visiting for Thanksgiving, her husband's parents and brother, which brought to mind the obvious: our family was apart for the first time ever on Thanksgiving. It was good that she was responsible for the Thanksgiving dinner for the new in-laws, as one experience could cancel out the other one. On Skype, I was able to visit with our cat, Elliott, who has been in our family for seven years.Carmen Pampa's Thanksgiving would be celebrated on Saturday. Joel is responsible for the sweet potatoes, and I am making the fudge pies and apple cider. A comparison of my menu with Emer's as well as the menu for my own family in Nashville (I got to talk with my dad's wife, Mary, so I am connecting with family today in the event that the internet breaks tomorrow--the family that will gather tomorrow in Nashville is my dad, his wife, Mary, my younger brother and his intended, Wendy, and my sister's family) revealed that Thanksgiving meals should somehow be comprised of a green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, devilled eggs, and fudge pies, along with the usual turkey and dressing.

At Carmen Pampa, we will be celebrating Thanksgiving with 27 people all told, priests, sisters, the core group of volunteers/missioners/gringo staff, and some visitors from the U.S. embassy in La Paz. Unlike the North Americans who will be eating in wintry dining rooms, possibly with candlelight, we will be dining in the flower-lined garden between the Convent and the volunteer house, with two tarps to keep the sun out of our eyes. I am told that our guests will bring six bottles of wine each.

Tonight there will be no Mass, since the priests and sisters are having a diocesan-wide convocation. But Wednesday night Masses are iffy these days, and I know that last week after I set up the Mass, I was told by the main office that there would not be a Mass. I took everything down and locked up the church, only to find that one of the priests had driven from Coroico at the last minute to have Mass. When he arrived, just about ten minutes after I had closed up the church on the upper campus, I sheepishly waved at him from the tienda where I was eating my fried chicken and french fries. NOT MY FAULT, I wanted to say. I really like this particular priest.

There are so many opportunities for mis-communication. The president of the college had not felt well, so he went home, after telling the office that there would be no Mass. Later, the other priest was told that Fr. Freddy was sick, and jumped into his car to have Mass. The replacement priest remarked on how clean the church was, with fresh flowers, but no people. The same thing happens on the lower campus, where I am told to have the church down there ready for Mass, since there is a fifty-fifty chance that there will be a Mass. If my Spanish were as good as Sr. Jean's, and I pray that one day it will be much better than it is now, I will do what she would do if she were not on a two-month vacation: I would have a Communion service. And maybe someday I will give what Catholics call a "reflection" (so called if a female or other non-ordained person gives a sermon/homily) in Spanish. Having preached in Protestant churches, but not in the Catholic Church, I am able to do some things in my own language that I cannot do in Spanish.

I have now arranged to communicate by email with the priests on Wednedays and Thursdays. So things get better as I learn the Bolivian ropes. Our cell phone tower was working for two days, but a thief stole the cable, costing over fifteen thousand dollars, and so we are once again back to ground zero: a cell phone in every pocket and a brand-new tower on the hill, but no cellular communication.

As I have written my blog, I have been waiting for the faculty bus to take all of us administrators down to the lower campus for the faculty meeting. This is a rare opportunity for me to go to the meeting, since the Mass is definitely not going to happen. But the bus has not appeared (I later found out that it was in the shop in Coroico).Tonight, because the Mass is definitely cancelled, Joel and I are able to attend the English club meeting: the students studying English are able to watch movies in English, play cards or games, and have an immersion night in English. I am waiting to find out if the social hour is actually going to take place.

What does work? The campus ministry meetings always happen every Tuesday night; the Wednesday night Masses were celebrated like clockwork until about three weeks ago, with beautiful flowers and joyous music; Sunday Mass always "happens;" English program meetings and community meetings convene without fail, and the students have been coming to class faithfully since Joel and I had to miss two weeks of classes due to the blockade. I noted also that one of the most beautiful garden paths that I have ever seen, in North American, Europe, and South America, had been created less than a half mile below our living quarters, and that tourists from other towns in Bolivia had come to enjoy both its beauty and the vista it offers of the Andes Mountains.

I can't help but think that as my Spanish improves, I will be more "in the know" about what happens and what doesn't happen. In the United States, I was one of those people who always came to meetings about ten minutes late. Maybe I was a kind of rebel; here my rebellion takes the form of being on time. **I look forward to seeing what kind of person emerges from this mission experience in the coming two years.

**I still have the capacity to be late . . . .

Hellenism or Hebraism?

We are vacationing in La Paz by compulsion because of the blockade to the yungas (hot tropical valleys) that is keeping us from taking a mini van or bus from La Paz to our home in Carmen Pampa. The road block hardly seems resolvable by negotiation because the cocaleros (coca growers) are not only demanding that they be allowed to grow larger quantities of coca but are seeking the resignation of the vice-minister of the department of coca. Why would the cocaleros want this person removed? In my mind, he is someone who is not one of them and does not cooperate with their objectives and needs. Does a president remove someone from office simply because a group of protesters asks for that removal? Even though Evo Morales was the president of the coca growers union, I don’t think that he would undo his decision to place this person in the vice-ministerial role. Morales removes people from office if they are found to be corrupt, but not because a protest group seeks their removal. But we shall see.

Hence, I don’t think that we will have safe passage to the yungas for a while. We have an extended stay in La Paz, the city where Joel and I come once a month to get our checks cashed, so to speak, and buy those commodities, like cheese, wheat flour, or even items for the apartment, that are unavailable in Coroico, the tourist town just six kilometers (3 miles or so) from Carmen Pampa. I also have an internist here who sees me regularly.

The town seems European to me, and the apartment houses and homes remind me both of those in Cochabamba, and of those villas in the Alps, particularly in Bavaria. Oxygen is sparse, so we can’t easily climb the hills here that remind me of San Francisco—they are so steep—and Joel and I have to remind one another that we must stop to catch our breath. The coffee houses, the favorite one being Alexander Coffee, the parks, and the cleanliness of the city appeal to us. Artist shops (artesanias) abound, and the cathedrals offer us a sense of the holy as well as the artistic. We are going to the national museum today, as well as to the anthropological museum, which will tell us more about other indigenous groups in Bolivia. We want to take in the art, history, and current events of La Paz, and thus, Bolivia. The Spanish words are hard for me to remember, so I rely on Joel to write things down, feeling that I should be making my own list.

The question of what kind of person I have become has struck me hard. I don’t want to sightsee. I do want to learn about the culture and history of the country that I am calling my home for three years. Have I become a person entirely dedicated to performing my duty? What happened to the person who used to want to travel to other places, where I could visit cathedrals, castles, and the homes of departed artists, where I could re-imagine scenes from British or European novels taking place before me, or envision the ruins come to life with people from long ago?

Matthew Arnold, in his essay Culture and Anarchy castigated his nineteenth-century British audience for become so enmeshed in trying to fulfill their responsibilities, carried away by the “fire of duty,” that they were guilty of crushing the explorative minds of their artists, scientists, and innovative thinkers—those people whose genius could carry their nation to greatness. He wrote about the strictness of duty as that which could either quench or balance the expansiveness of consciousness. People needed to make room for the genius of those whose vision rose above morality. Don’t get me wrong: Arnold was a poet, an inspector of schools, a teacher whose methods many times over-rode his own reach for new ideas, and a literary and social critic. He was quintessentially Victorian in his energy, desire to reform the world, and stringent ethics. But he, like John Stuart Mill, not Jon Stewart, saw the need to create a society in which the geniuses of art, economics, science, and philosophy would feel enough at home to flourish and push people to encounter their visionary ideas and art.

Am I too much of a missioner, so driven by the zeal of duty, that I cannot open my eyes to the cultural horizons here in La Paz? Why am I so driven to return to my post, where my students are being taught by substitute teachers and I am not there to accompany the niňos in the children’s library or help with campus ministry?

Part of my response to these questions is that I am actually not fulfilling my duties in Carmen Pampa, but am here because of the bloqueo or blockade. Although people here in the house where I am staying, the Maryknoll Casa, have advised me to descansar, or rest, I want to return to my work.

But I will catch up on my writing, this blog, emails, thank-you letters, and my own journal writing. As I do this, I understand that while I am working, I am also encouraging my Hellenistic side to explore ideas around me, to contemplate this society and my own life. We missioners met in Cochabamba for a retreat just a few days ago in the sense that we ate together, talked a lot, and had a prayer service. In my view, at this point in mission, we are feeling the difficulties of being on mission. All of us have been sick, some more devastatingly than others, others have been overworked, well, all of us have been, and none of us have had enough “down time,” to use Clare’s words. Clare has inspired me because of her efforts to create balance in her life, despite continual illnesses for the past three months. She goes to exercise classes, always takes time for friends, and keeps up her personal journal, all with intentionality. And as all five of us sat down at the table in Clare and Nora’s apartment, where the missioners before us, Richard and Kristen, lived, and we read the Franciscan office together, passing the book around the table, I felt a surge of spiritual vitality that had been missing in my life. We were still in community, having come from the Casa Salvador in Washington, D.C., on Quincy Street, just a few houses down from the Franciscan Monastery. We were all “feeling it,” feeling the problems and dislocation of being on mission in another country. We wanted to do our best here, to find our niches, to walk with our friends in Bolivia in these difficult times. Being with them all somehow felt like being at home, and I did not want to leave, despite the fact that we all had work to do.

So Joel and I have returned to La Paz, and in a state of limbo, are trying to unravel all our thoughts about being on mission. By definition, being on mission is Hellenistic because we are expanding our consciousness. This is a euphemism because all of our ideas about how life should be are challenged. We need only to keep our minds open to experience new ways of doing, being, and seeing. As missioners, we are also enlivened by the zeal to do good. But what I think we also need is the space for contemplation, prayer, writing, and thinking. We desire so ardently to be available to the people that sometimes we are not available to ourselves or to God.

So, we are privileged to visit the national art museum today. The efforts to render the beauty of the world in art cannot be disregarded while we are captive in this city. Our sense of reality will be challenged and shaped by our encounters with new ideas, history (new to us), and art. A part of this realization that we must continually encounter beauty and ideas within our world is our belief that we have to grow larger in order to live in the worlds that we have come to. The Hellenistic view of the ever-expanding consciousness is indeed Franciscan. Francis may have said that there was no need to build a bookshelf because then he would have to find books to put on it, but he would have sanctioned Clare and Nora’s venture into the concha to purchase a bookshelf for those many books lying around their apartment. Francis was non-materialistic, but he was not against the ideas found in books, or the way that books nurture our spirits.

So there is a time to read books, write letters to friends (for if we don’t talk with them, how will we know who we are, who they are, and how we have grown?), go to museums as well as bookstores, art galleries, and cathedrals, both to pray and to just take in the beauty, and time to just look into the landscape and compare the mountains in La Paz to those in the yungas and Cochabamba. We are Hellenistic and Hebraistic because we want to love this world, appreciate it, and make it a more just, hospitable place for human beings, made in God’s image. And we must also write, for how will we know what we think if we don’t write it down? Here, on mission, in limbo in La Paz, one can be both Hellenistic and Hebraistic. One can find a kind of balance.

Not Coca, But Basil

"It's Hard to Dehydrate Food in the Yungas, among other Things"



In Carmen Pampa, at our apartment at the UAC (Unidad Academica Campesina), most food preparation and cooking take longer than we are used to. Here is one shot of our kitchen: in the foreground are the basil leaves that are so abundant here at the college. We decided to dry the leaves so that we could store them for another time, since we can't possibly find enough recipes for the basil that we get from Rosemary, the person in charge of the organic garden across the road from our house.






Note also the water filters, two of them, in the background. We can purify five two-liter bottles of drinkable water in record time with our stainless steel water filter, where we pour the water after we have boiled it for twenty minutes (due to the altitude). To the right, you see the invaluable jar of peanut butter (brought in by visitors from the United States), as well as the other staples that belong in a typical cupboard.

We have accustomed ourselves to soaking the fruit and vegetables in a solution called DG-6, a kind of bleach that kills bacteria and parasites,. Everything takes much longer here, from purifying water, to preparing fruits and vegetables, to washing clothes by hand.

The morning commute, however, takes the same amount of time as it did when I commuted to work when living in a community outside the environs of Nashville, Tennessee. As I walk down the hill from the upper campus, Campus Leahy, to the lower one, Campus Manning, to teach my 11:00 English class, I feel that my new lifestyle is much improved over my former one, when I endured the traffic jams on Interstate 440 on the way to teach class.

Here, I slip down the mountainside (what one instructor calls a "controlled fall") in a mere twenty minutes, taking the shortcuts that the students have created, even to the extent of creating a hillside of steps cut from the ground itself, easy to go down but daunting to climb back.





















At this point, the steepest part of the commute is over.






















I pass the tea plantation before coming to the coffee plantation. The coffee plantation is next to the "cafetal," which is the structure where the coffee beans are dried and refined. It is an elaborately designed structure, with a large roof to protect the coffee beans as they dry. At night when we walk up the hill, the lights there are still on and people continue working there. Coffee production at Carmen Pampa is a small operation, with just enough coffee to sell to the locals (like Joel and me), but the coffee is the best that I have ever tasted.



After crossing through the other managed areas of the hillside, I cut through the pueblo of Carmen Pampa itself, weaving my way between the homes of the people living there.






















Here, when I first aimed my camera at some of the ducks on the steps, the rest of the ducks scurried up to join them, as if they wanted to be included in the picture too.


I pass the cows also as I walk down to the lower campus. Finally, I pass the hog shed, where the hogs are always snorting. I feel a twinge of guilt as I walk past then, knowing that I am a huge fan of Carmen Pampa ham, the best that I have ever tasted (just like the coffee!). The ham is a cross between Tennessee country ham and Virginia ham in the United States. Joel and I buy our eggs, ham, chicken, and coffee from the farmers close by, as well as benefiting from the continual harvest of vegetables from the organic gardens here.


The recycling center itself is cutting edge, from my perspective. In effect, we have the production, processing, and recycling of our food here before our eyes. In another blog, I will give all the details of our recycling center, along with pictures. This center, like all other aspects of food production and re-use of waste is fundamental to the research projects and resulting theses of the students who study here. Joel and I are the beneficiaries of this educational process.


The schedule for us here is challenging, when one factors in the climb back up the hill to perform other duties, among them, pastoral. The problem for me is not so much that we are scheduled to do many kinds of work, like continuing to facilitate the children's library that Jean and Lee Lechtenberg established, teaching two classes, working with campus ministry, and preparing Mass and having Liturgy of the Hours every morning at 6:30 on our upper campus, but that the commute up and down the hill to attend to these responsibilities is so exhausting. As ever when one is on mission, all activities take longer to do and many activities may be shifted around on the calendar. One may prepare a class only to find that the students have been re-routed that day for a campus clean-up or a lecture that has materialized at the last moment--one that students actually should attend because opportunities for exposure to this information are limited and must be grasped when available.



Last night at the Maryknoll House in La Paz, where Joel and I stay when we come to the city, I was reading a Spiritual Directory for missioners (that I randomly found somewhere close to the chapel) and noted that two of the key qualities for missioners were accessibility and adaptability. My response to this is in the affirmative. My job here is to be accessible when and where I am wanted, and my other duty is to adapt to the circumstances of those times when I am accessed by those who may need what I have to offer.



With that lengthy sentence, I will close my blog. This weekend in La Paz, where we come to buy necessary goods for our apartment in the yungas, we have the companionship of a few friends from Carmen Pampa who came here also, as well as the conversation of a priest who has lived in Bolivia for 36 years, almost as long as our mentor Fr. Iggie Harding. Fr. Mike Gilgannon lives in the Maryknoll House and works in the department of La Paz, as a priest, educator, writer, and general administrator of programs. It is good to have the differences offered by the city in La Paz to offset our experiences in the place that we call home, Carmen Pampa. It is also good to hear the words of advice from a seasoned priest who has been in Bolivia for so long. From him, I discover that my reactions to the differences in culture are quite typical for a citizen from the U.S., and I also hear that Bolivia has been evolving over the years to a more efficient nation. I also hear of his optimism about the Morales government as well as his optimistic stories about his work in establishing youth groups, both college and high school, and new parishes to accommodate the migratory groups who are moving down into the city from the campo (countryside). I take away from the Maryknoll House his courage and optimism so that I may have a little more spring in my step (Oh those aching knees!!) as I climb back up the hillside after working in the campus below.

"How beautiful are the feet of missioners on the mountains"

“Que hermosos los pies de los misioneros en las montaňas”


When we graduated from our five-month course at the Maryknoll Language Institute, we students were asked to create our own liturgy and put together a talent show. I had signed up for the liturgy committee, so that was my focus. Our motto this year was “How beautiful the feet of the missionaries on the mountains,” taken from Isaiah 52:7:


“Cuán hermosos son sobre los montes los pies del que trae buenas nuevas, anuncia la paz, teniendo una buena noticia, que anuncia salvación, que dice a Sión: ‘Tu Dios es Rey!’”


How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, announcing peace, bringing good news, who announce salvation, who say to Zion, ‘Your God is King!”

It had not been easy to write the liturgy because the customary symbol for graduation was the camino, the road that the missioners take as they travel to serve God’s people. The professors at Maryknoll were ready to plug in the same graduation slogan, but our class wanted to take advantage of the symbolic terrain of the mountains that surrounded us in Cochabamba, as well as the mountains that would challenge us in other areas of Latin America, and Bolivia in particular. For Joel and me, this would be the Andes at our mission site at Carmen Pampa, and the nearest city of size, the plateau of La Paz, the highest capital city in the world. As a rule, the mountains beckoned to us in all their beauty, but the high altitude challenged our bodies’ ability to adapt to the higher altitudes. We needed stronger lungs and more red blood corpuscles to survive at those heights. Climbing mountains, one must plant one’s feet firmly as one ascends.

The liturgy, once begun, took on a life of its own, becoming the work of many hands. The sisters from Japan and Korea created mountains from choice fabric draped artistically on the walls of the grand sala, transforming the plain white walls into an evocative mountain landscape. My conversation partner of five months, Minh, had cut letters from magazines to articulate the slogan alongside the mountain mural. The letters from the multi-colored magazine print flashed their luminous message as the students processed into the graduation, one by one leaving their backpacks, or mochilas at the base of the mountains depicted on the sala wall. Our Franciscan missioner Clare, leading the ceremony, spoke briefly of the choices that each missioner/ brother / sister / priest had to make when figuratively packing his or her backpack to come on mission, what to leave behind, and what to bring.

The professors had selected one hymn that fit the students’ theme:

EL SEÑOR ELIGIÓ
El Señor eligió a sus discipulos
Los mandó de dos en dos.
(The Lord selected his disciples and sent them out two by two)

CORO:
Es hermoso ver bajar de la montaña
Los pies del Mensajero de la paz
(How beautiful to see at the foot of the mountains the feet of the messengers of peace)

How appropriate this theme was for us: primarily, it is the poor who live on the mountains, in El Alto, where two Methodist students would be going; in the yungas, where Joel and I would be going; and even the hills that extended beyond the South Zone of Cochabamba, the poverty-stricken section of Cochabamba, where two of our Franciscans would be serving. What good news would we bring, except that God’s kingdom is coming, that we have come to promote peace and justice, and that we would come as those who serve the people? In all respects, our climb on the mountains would be strenuous.

Our Franciscan missioner Nora headed up the talent show. In addition to helping to write the script for the skit, performing in many dances, she was the M.C., entertaining the audience between the acts with the patter of jokes in Spanish, dressed in whatever costume she happened to be wearing at the time, so omnipresent she seemed to be. We heard Tony, our Irish Christian brother, present a program on the Irish potato famine, and then sing an Irish ballad commemorating it. Becky, returning from her mission in El Alto, sang a beautiful solo, accompanied by Jose Luis, whose guitar and voice accompanied her melody. One Brazilian priest and two Asian sisters sang in turn in their own languages different verses of a haunting song. In addition to skits, student dancing, and one student’s (Carl’s) trumpet solos, we watched as the Maryknoll priests, staff, and professors performed one Bolivian dance in full costume for us. Finally, we watched a professional dance troupe, and then listened to Jose Luis’s own band whose repertoire exceeded our expectations.

The festivities went on until the late afternoon. We had more grilled meat, potatoes, rice, and fresh vegetables than we could eat, along with desserts and cold drinks. As we sat on the edge of what usually was the volleyball court, under to ample white tent, we watched Bolivian dancing and listened to the music of the band. Then the mood changed as members of the audience began to dance. Gradually, as the dancing continued, I myself gradually began to wind down. I had not slept much the night before, having written my farewell speech, the despedida, that all of us were required to give, in the wee hours of the morning. I watched as the students, one by one, told their professors and friends goodbye, walking away from the world that that had enfolded us so completely since January when we had first stepped out of the airplane in our new country, experiencing our first challenge of altitude sickness from the new heights (12,000 feet above sea level) to which our calling had led us. We had acclimated to the challenge of altitude; now we would strive to acclimate ourselves to the life of mission to which we were called.



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I am including here pictures of the mountains that I have seen since coming to my mission site in Carmen Pampa, the Unidad Académica Campesina (UAC-Carmen Pampa), part of the Catholic University of Bolivia, where Joel and I will be helping to teach English, work in campus ministry, and do any other work that is assigned to us. We live on the upper campus, called the Leahy campus, where the students majoring in agronomy, education, and pre-university (those courses taken before the students begin their majors) live. The lower campus, a mile and a half down the mountainside, houses those students whose majors are veterinary science, eco-tourism, and nursing. On the lower campus is the volunteer house, which is the community living space for volunteers, most of whom come from the United States. Sara Mechtenberg, communications liason, lives there as well, and Hugh Smeltekop, Vice-Director General, lives in an apartment nearby. Sister Jean, a member of the order of the Missionary Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, lives in the Convent next door to the volunteer house. Joel and I will occasionally walk down to eat a meal, or just visit.

Coroico, the town nearest to us, where we buy our food and staples. It is a popular tourist town for hiking and gaining access to "the road of death," "the most dangerous road in the world," where many bicyclists test their mettle against a perilous road along the edge of the mountains.

Here are two views of the lower campus, Campus Manning, as Joel and I walk down the road to visit the lower campus. In the second picture, note the tree in the foreground, which is an ambibo. It is filled with ants that live within it and "protect" the tree. One dare not bother this tree! In the picture, one can see the church tower and surrounding buildings.

When Joel and I took a mini-bus to La Paz, we got a chance to snap this shot of the canopy of clouds that obscured the very deep mountain valleys. Our mini bus stopped because a crew was repairing a rock slide on the side of the mountain.

For perspective purposes, here I am on the side of the road in front of the morning fog or rain clouds that had settled over the bottom of the mountain valley.

Here is a view from one of the upper roads around La Plaz as we wound up the Altiplano.

Not a mountain view, but a view of the congregation during Mass at the church, Christo Rey, Christ the King. As we walked up the aisle for Communion, the choir sang "EL SEÑOR ELIGIÓ," with the words, "How beautiful to see at the foot of the mountains the feet of the messengers of peace."