Carnaval and Carmen Pampa

In case you’ve been wondering since my last post, water-ballooning was a huge success. I missed a lot of people because I forgot that my velocity in the car required me to release the balloon early in order to land in the right place. Alas, it’s a lesson for next time, and I still had a lot of fun trying. Once we ran out of balloons and I got my hands on the super soaker, ohhhhh, those people didn’t know what him ‘em. Before you get upset, you need to understand that this is expected and practically everyone participates in the revelry. Also, we had rules: no older people, nobody in professional clothing, no parents with babies, and I primarily aimed for “chicos” aka males between the ages of 12 and maybe late 30’s or so. Wish you could have been there!

Carnaval. In Bolivia, the heart of the traditions around Carnaval is found in a town called Oruro, which at one point in time was the center of mining. I still don’t feel like I understand it, but I will share a little of what I have learned. Carnaval is not something that one can learn about but one really needs to “feel” it. It’s all about relationship, harmony and balance. By taking part in the celebration, you’re taking part in the same public space and thereby entering into new relationships and making amends. It’s like a weaving because just as there are thousands of strands coming together to create a much larger more beautiful piece, thousands of people work on different aspects to make the celebration what it is, a microcosm for life.

This year I did not go to Oruro, but instead took a trip to a beautiful place called Carmen Pampa. I left at 11pm on Friday on a night bus with Clare, another person in my program. I had to choose between staying hydrated to help ward off my inevitable altitude sickness or not drinking much in order not to have to go to the bathroom as the bus will not stop and there’s no toilet on the bus…therefore I chose to be nauseous and dry-mouthed, but I didn’t throw up this time! We arrived in La Paz at 6am and took a large minivan from La Paz to Coroico, which took about 3 hours. We went from about 12,000 ft. in La Paz to 6,000 ft in Coroico, so I was happy as a clam.

The old road between La Paz and Coroico is notorious for being “the most dangerous road in the world” but there is a new road, which is the one I took and it runs parallel to the old road for much of the journey. People love to pay to ride bikes down the road and I saw many of these adventure-seekers on my return trip. People still die somewhat regularly as I hear through the grapevine, but I’ve also heard the experience is worth the money and the risk. While I didn’t ride down on a bike, I did get to see some pretty incredible views when the clouds were not completely gulping us up.

 

Our final destination was Carmen Pampa, a very small “pueblo” out in the country or “campo” in the region called the Yungas, which means “warm lands” in Aymara. As stated by good ol’ Wikipedia, the Yungas “is a stretch of forest along the eastern slope of the Andes Mountains from southeastern Peru through central Bolivia. It is a transitional zone between the Andean highlands and the eastern forests. Like the surrounding areas, it has characteristics of the Neotropic ecozone.” I think the part I was in is considered a cloud forest, and once you see my pictures, you can understand why.

We were met in Coroico by “a man in a yellow hat” who is a volunteer teacher at the university for this semester. He took us to a lovely little empty restaurant/café to have lunch/breakfast before taking the 30-40 min. drive out to Carmen Pampa. It had a gorgeous view and they served muesli, which is one of the foods I miss the most since living in Germany.

 

The dirt road between Coroico and Carmen Pampa is a bumpy one and runs along the edge of the side of the mountain, providing some awesome views of the valley when there’s a break in the tropical vegetation on both sides. We arrived on the campus to be warmly greeted by Hugh, an American who has been there for 10 years and is the VP of the university. His hospitality did not stop for a moment our entire visit – he even drove us at 6:30am on Wednesday back into Coroico so that we could return home to Cochabamba. They showed us to our rooms in the volunteer house and let us take naps since we hadn’t slept that much on the bus. I woke up to the sound of a coconut being smashed to smithereens.

As I entered the kitchen, both Hugh and David (the man in the yellow hat) were working on a delicious dinner, a chocolate cake, an apple cake and fresh bread. Wow! As it turned out, it wasn’t really for us necessarily, but taking advantage of having gas to run the oven. David had waited in line for about 2 hours to get gas that morning in Coroico before we arrived. While they were preparing dinner, we noticed these kids (both boys and girls) outside the kitchen window, hanging up barbie's clothing to dry on the line - so cute!

 

Before I share the highlights of our stay, I want to give a little background on the university and why we visited. The first academic year was 1993 with 54 students and now there are about 700. The university is “a joint effort between the Catholic University of Bolivia, the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, the Diocese of Coroico, and the sub-central Villa Nilo, the governing body of the Aymara Indian nation. Motivated by the inadequacy of secondary school education for lifting rural people out of poverty, this new college was founded to create skilled professionals who would become sensitive and impassioned leaders, addressing the most pressing needs of their rural communities. The College serves young people from rural communities throughout the Department of La Paz and from the massive urban slums surrounding the capital city of La Paz.“ ( http://carmenpampafund.org )

They have 5 majors: Veterinary Science, Sustainable Agriculture (Agronomy), Public Health Nursing, Primary Education (Teaching), and Ecotourism. While studying, the students reach out to the people in the surrounding area as well, so the immediate communities are served as well as the students. It’s a great place and I really enjoyed my visit. Because it was a holiday weekend, there were few students on campus but I did get to meet several and hang out with the kids of the some of the neighbors (about 40 families live in Carmen Pampa). Franciscan missioners have worked here in the past so that is how we got connected with them.

4 Highlights: 1. Screen on the green 4 nights in a row--Every night Hugh set up the projector to project a movie onto the side of the house. As my host-sister said, Bolivia is a country filled with very smart people and being such a poor country it is thereby also filled with imitations and contraband. Both of the Twilight movies had been pirated and were of pretty poor quality, but you get what you pay for I guess.

2. Surprise trip to the hospital—just as we were about to tour the upper and lower campuses on Sunday morning, a neighbor came over to Hugh and asked if he could help his daughter whose finger was smashed by a chair. We went along for the ride and ended up staying there for 4 hours. It was a good time for visiting, talking with other patients’ families, and with the nurses who were former students at the university. The girl is fine but the bone did get crushed so she got a nice bandage and was out playing with us a couple days later.

3. Monday Hike—we headed out into the forest down the valley and up the other side, walking past lots of beautiful plants and crops. There were many vegetables I didn’t recognize, but I got to taste a fresh coffee bean off the plant – quite sweet actually. We stopped for about an hour to pick coca with a family and then rested with them and chatted for a while. There were maybe 4 or 5 adults, both men and women, and maybe 6 or 7 kids skillfully and quickly picking coca leaves on this very steep hill. After the coca is picked, it’s dried for a few hours by the family and then has to go to a central processing place in La Paz…at least I think that’s where it is. Their clothing was rather worn and dirty, and yet so were ours. I mention that just to point out a sign that life in the “campo” is rugged and not easy. We hiked on for several more hours and it was great – I loved it and you can see pictures!

4. Tuesday/Carnaval—this day of thanksgiving and harmony-seeking started by taking an hour long ride in the back of a pickup truck along the very bumpy road to a pueblo closer to Coroico for the blessing of a new room in a boarding school and a tractor. The bishop of Coroico and his 3 priests (including the one who is the president of the university at Carmen Pampa) were there along with others. We followed the bishop (who must be in his late 60’s or 70’s) up this really steep hill through lots of long grass, mud and animal droppings to get to the tractor. I was shocked that he could do that with such ease! It’s tradition to take a bottle of beer (alcohol) and spray/sprinkle it as a way of asking for blessing and giving thanks for what we have, so that’s what they did with the tractor, along with water which was sprinkled using a rose. We proceeded to cover it with confetti and streamers.

 

Later when we got back to campus we went throughout the campus doing the same thing except without the beer – instead we used rubbing alcohol. THEN – I was ambushed with water balloons and foam by the neighbor kids. I wish I could show you a picture of me but I didn’t dare bring a camera near them. There are two pictures of them that I took with zoom hiding behind a door. They told me they’d been playing for 10 hours – not sure I believe that, but I am confident they were wet the whole day.

 

I made it back safely and soundly to Cochabamba on Wednesday night and after only two days of classes, am preparing for another weekend, lucky me! Tomorrow is the Carnaval party here in Cochabamba. I hope to go and depending on the amount of water, will hopefully get some pictures of the dances and bands.

5 Things I’m thankful for today: a safe return; my photo album of family and friends; receiving hospitality; being able to explore new places; learning Spanish.
For pictures, go to http://picasaweb.google.com/nora.pfeiffer