An Indian among Los Indígenas

by Ursula Pike

  “Can you tell me about your project and anything you feel is germane to the topic?” She scanned my face as she spoke, stopping at the brown smudge of a birthmark above my top lip. As my skin had darkened from living life outside, my birthmark had become more prominent. Her stare made me uncomfortable, and I stiffened a little. Then her eyes moved back to her paper. Did she really use the word germane? I hoped my answers would not sound as stupid as I felt.

  “My program is called Micro-Empresas con Jovenes.” Her brow crinkled, and I guessed that she did not understand Spanish. “Micro-Enterprise with Youth,” I said with one gush of breath. She looked down to her paper and scribbled something.

  “Tell me more about what you do on a daily basis.”

  “I wonder that myself.” I waited half a second for a laugh or a smirk that didn’t come. Her face remained blank. Clearing my throat, I began with my rehearsed answer: “I market the charangos the boys make in the workshop, and I started a bakery project with the girls to teach them business skills.”

  “How long was your training? Was it sufficient to prepare you for your position?” She looked straight into my eyes. This felt like an inquisition.

  “Three months. Mostly language classes, but also some culture and business training. It prepared me for the basics, but…,” I hesitated, not sure how complete an answer she wanted. “But it wasn’t until I was on-site, coming here every day, that I understood what was going on and how I could help the Center.” She shifted in her seat a little. Outside the room, two of the teenage girls were fixing each other’s hair and talking quietly as they prepared for their afternoon classes.

  “You called yourself a volunteer, but didn’t you say they pay you?”

  “Well, only enough for rent and food,” I said.

  “How much? If you don’t mind my asking.”

  I crossed my arms in front of me. I did mind her asking. Maybe because I had always been poor, I thought that asking how much someone made was rude. I wondered whether there was any way around this question.

  “All volunteers receive a living allowance to pay for necessities.” She was still looking at me, waiting for an answer. “Two hundred dollars,” I finally said. “A month.”

  “And how much does the average Bolivian make?” she asked. I shrugged my shoulders in fake ignorance. Well-paid teachers made about half what I did, but I was not sure what she meant by “the average Bolivian,” because construction workers were lucky to get a dollar a day.

  “This is an awful question to ask, but do you think it was worth the money it cost to get you here? The training and the housing and everything?” She pursed her lips and poised her pencil on the paper in front of her.

  “I hope so. I mean, I hope I’m worth it to the Bolivians.” I asked myself this question daily, but I wasn’t about to tell her that. I tried to be useful, but each day I had a small mountain of struggles to contend with—the language and cultural misunderstandings; my lack of knowledge about how the Bolivian economy worked; the challenges of being a young, unmarried woman in a culture where women held little power—all while missing my family and friends on the other side of the planet. This was hard, and I didn’t think I was doing a good job. I wasn’t about to tell her any of that either. I wanted her to think I had this, that I could handle it.

  She finished with some questions about Peace Corps as an organization. I answered them, but that question about my value gnawed at the back of my consciousness. Finally, she thanked me, tucked her pencil into her backpack, and excused herself. I stepped out into the bright sunlight, blinking and wondering whether the US taxpayer money spent to buy my ticket from Miami to La Paz and keep my belly full of quinoa and chewy meat was worth it. If I was worth it. In my family, I was considered a success because I graduated from college. I had managed to defy the presumed path for my life and arrive at the ripe old age of twenty-seven without getting knocked up. Here in this world, I felt like an imposter. I had a degree, but no idea what I was doing. When Rowena looked at me, maybe she saw a clueless Westerner, living a life that was luxurious compared to that of most Bolivians, and not doing much to help anyone. Throughout my life, people had passed judgment on me many times, but never had I been thought to have too much privilege.

  The next morning, I awoke early and crawled out of bed as fast as I could. It was the eve of the Festival of San Juan, Friday, June 23. I had no idea what to expect for the day ahead. The festival celebrated the life of St. John the Baptist, but was also the winter solstice. According to Bolivians, June 23 was la noche más fría del año, the coldest night of the year. The best way to approach the miserably cold night was face first with glasses full of chicha raised high in a toast.

  Fridays were my favorite day to be at the Center. It was día de los deportes, and the staff and children played games all afternoon. Teresa regularly kicked my ass at Chinese checkers, but after all these months, I was finally learning and ready to challenge her. It was the one day when the weight of helping the Bolivians was lifted from my shoulders. On Fridays, I was simply another staff member of the Children’s Center.

  After dinner, I went for a walk to see whether there were any bands celebrating the festival. There were fewer trucks and more people than usual on the streets. I watched a man stack several large pieces of wood upright. An older Bolivian woman lit the sticks at the bottom of another stack of logs.

  “What is this?” I asked her, motioning toward the sticks.

  “Una fogata,” she told me. A bonfire. As the flames moved up the sticks, the wood cracked, and white smoke escaped from the pile. Una fogata. All day the women at the Children’s Center had been saying the word, but I had had no idea what it meant. I stood there watching the fire burn, drawn into the sticks shrinking as the flames surrounded them. With a wave to the woman, I walked on toward the center of town, passing more fogatas being constructed or lit. The smell of burning wood was strong, and I wondered how many fires there were throughout the town. Winding my way past the market and the telephone office, I emerged onto the main street running through Kantuta.

  It was busy with cars and people moving in all directions. A man dragging a bulging plastic bag walked toward the night bus to Cochabamba. A group of teenage girls with long black hair clutched each other and walked down the sidewalk like one creature with eight jean-covered legs. Two men strummed charangos and harmonized on a song. The only word I recognized was palomita, which meant “little dove.”

  “Ursula,” I heard in a familiar accent. It was Lucas, the Dutch agronomist. I hadn’t been looking for him, but now that I found him, I took a step toward him on the curb. He stood next to a Bolivian engineer who was almost always with him. Tall and slightly pudgy, he wore glasses and did not stand fully upright. He was a thinking man in a world that preferred men to be tough, with strong hands. I nodded to the engineer, and he tipped his head slightly in my direction.

  “We were eating la cena here and then walking.” Lucas pulled his hand out of his coat pocket and motioned up the street. “And you, Ursula, where are you going?” I loved the way Lucas pronounced my name, smooth and fast as though he had been saying it his whole life. It almost made up for all the substitute teachers in elementary school who mangled it as if to imply that no one on earth had ever had this name before.

  “Nowhere in particular,” I said. “Have you seen these bonfires everyone’s got on the street?” We turned to look at another fire being lit a block away. The Bolivian engineer mumbled something in Spanish to Lucas and then walked away. I was relieved because I didn’t think he liked me. I was happy to have Lucas all to myself.

  “I heard about a little willage named San Juan. Just outside of town where everyone goes for tonight. Would you like to walk there with me?” Did he just say willage? How adorable. But I did not want to embarrass him, so I kept quiet. More important, this sounded like a date. Maybe? I could never tell. My own insecurities about whether a smart agronomist from the Netherlands could find me anything more than
a curiosity, and the three layers of culture—mine, Bolivian, and his—clouded the meaning of every word between us.

  “Sure, I’m up for anything,” I said. And I was. A unique cultural event in a familiar setting. The familiar and the exotic. In these moments, I knew why I sometimes connected with anthropologists despite my distrust of the profession. I was uncomfortable when those same anthropologists directed their gaze at Native people because we became subjects, not humans. Still, I understood their fascination.

  We walked the streets of Kantuta for the next hour. Each time we stopped to speak to anyone, he invited us to drink. “Ingeniero,” they called to him. He would share his cigarettes with me and the men who had invited him to drink. The traditional way to spend the night was outside around a fire with friends eating grilled meat and washing it down with chicha. When I first arrived in Bolivia, the festival activities seemed to be just one more disorienting event that disrupted our training schedule. Now I was eager to see how each town celebrated its own festivals in its way.

  At 10 p.m., Lucas asked me whether I still wanted to go to San Juan. I was ready if he was. We set out on foot and spent more than an hour walking along the unlit winding gravel road. We did not know how far it was, and several times he stopped and asked whether I wanted to turn back. Despite the chill, the walking kept us warm, and I knew that eventually we’d come upon someone who would help us find the way. What I didn’t tell Lucas was how much I enjoyed this moment, out here under the moon, walking and easily sharing stories. Was I imagining it, or did we have something here?

  Before too long someone did come along—a teenager I recognized from Kantuta. He was walking back from San Juan and told us exactly how to get there, and soon afterward we saw a large bonfire blazing by the side of the road. A man with a white felt hat sat beside the fire playing a charango. The fire warmed my cheeks, and I relaxed my shoulders. The longer I stood there, the better it felt. A hefty Bolivian with a pile of curly black hair stepped into the circle of people surrounding the fire and nodded to everyone. He was wearing a long red poncho over his slacks and cradled a charango. I recognized him from a meeting at the mayor’s office back in Kantuta. He joined the campesino in the white hat for a song in Quechua. I understood enough to get that the song was about a woman, un warmicita, who had broken his heart. I looked up to the sky. We were miles from any city, and the stars spread across the night sky from horizon to horizon. I peeked at Lucas and was happy to see he had the same grin I did. This was a moment of joy. I felt privileged to stand there, surrounded by Bolivians, in a little village celebrating the coming of winter.

  When the man from the mayor’s office finished playing and put down his instrument, he was immediately offered a cup of chicha. He refused it at first, saying he was sick, but then reluctantly accepted. This was more than simply a drink. This was generosity and gratitude in a cup. Halfway through a regimen of antibiotics to get rid of the latest version of intestinal parasites, I understood the difficult position he was in when offered a drink. To refuse it was rude, doubly so if a poor person was inviting a wealthier person to drink. It would be like telling him that his generosity was not good enough. The official splashed some chicha from the cup onto the ground for Pachamama and poured the rest down his throat quickly. Handing the empty cup back to the campesino, he nodded and began playing his charango again.

  There was nothing more Native than the interaction I’d just witnessed. At times like this, it seemed North American and South American Indians were cousins. That connection between food, generosity, community, and gratitude was so integral to my understanding of the world that I found it difficult to believe that it wasn’t universal.

  Two gourds full of chicha later, we excused ourselves and headed for the rumble of a truck loading up for Kantuta. Lucas and I jumped into the back. It was nearly 1 a.m. by the time we reached the main street of Kantuta. We stood on the street near Lucas’s apartment, and I said good night to him. I did not want it to end. The chicha and the darkness made me bold.

  “Will we ever be more than just friends?” I asked as we stood in his doorway. I bit my lip and felt my heart pounding. A bonfire lit up the street a few feet away, and people in ponchos huddled around it, their hands open to the flames.

  “No, I do not think so,” Lucas said in a crisp accent, his hands tucked into the front pockets of his jeans for warmth. He was not unkind, simply honest. He shrugged his shoulders and leaned forward to kiss my cheek before saying good night.

  I walked back to my house, passing bonfires and invitations to drink. I hunched my shoulders against the cold as I stepped carefully on the uneven cobblestone street. Back in my room, I crawled into bed fully clothed. Outside near my window, two men stood around a fire, talking too low to hear. Their mumbling was comforting, and I drifted off to sleep listening to the sound of their voices. I was embarrassed for thinking that I was wanted. I vowed never to let that happen again.

  12

  Amigos — Friends

  The next morning, I stayed in bed as long as possible. I was embarrassed that I had once again misjudged a man. Since arriving in Bolivia, I had only engaged in drunken hookups with other volunteers that never turned into the first night of a relationship that I wanted. Sometimes it was pure lust, meeting my need to touch someone and be touched. But when it wasn’t, I never let on that I was interested in finding out whether we could be more.

  Looking outside my window, I noticed a steady trickle of people walking to San Juan, taking the same route that Lucas and I had the previous night. Some people forced chairs and bags of food onto buses. The sun shone down through a cloudless sky, and I knew it was going to be a warm winter day. The blackened wood from the previous night’s bonfires had been removed or burned up. A curly redhead stood out among the black braids. It took me a moment to realize that it was Rowena. She looked left and right, watching the people around her. I stepped back into the shadows of my room, not wanting to be seen. I worried that she would ask me to be her communicator and guide to San Juan. After last night, I did not feel that I could help anyone. When she disappeared into the market, I decided to head to San Juan to see what it looked like in the daylight. A long walk was what I needed to get me through the day.

  “Hola, doña,” Teresa said with exaggerated formality as she opened her front door with a towel draped over her shoulder. Before leaving town, I decided to visit with Teresa and see whether she wanted to come to San Juan. She let me into the large room that was the main part of the house. A thin blue curtain hung from a wire on the ceiling, separating the front room from the area where they all slept. I saw several beds behind the curtain and wondered who slept where. Her son sat watching cartoons on a small black-and-white television.

  “Hola, doña Teresa.” I purposely overannunciated the words, and we both giggled. This was our little game. We liked to pretend that we were discussing important business when usually we were talking about laundry or men. I followed her into the cool darkness of the unfinished room out back where the sink was located.

  “How is your Dutch agronomist?” she asked, raising her eyebrows suggestively. Curly black hair framed her round face. Teresa knew all my secrets, including my crushes. She was my best friend in Kantuta and the only person I felt comfortable confiding in.

  “I have no idea how Ingeniero Lucas is, and I don’t expect to talk to him anytime soon.” Teresa looked up from the laundry she was folding. I told her about our evening and the question I asked him at the end of the night. She was surprised I’d asked him directly. This was not something she would say to a man. I assumed she wouldn’t ever have to ask it because I’d been told that Bolivian men rarely hid their interest. She frowned when I told her his answer.

  “There will be others,” she said, touching my shoulder. I was grateful to have Teresa as a friend—a real friend who helped me through the crushes and the rejections. I would like to say that I followed this moment of caring with a question about her life, about her romantic
prospects. But I didn’t. I was a twenty-seven-year-old woman obsessed with her own life.

  “Do you want to walk to San Juan with me?” I asked.

  “Maybe tomorrow. I have to finish washing the clothes.” She threw a pair of boy’s pants into the cement sink.

  We said good-bye, and she waved with one hand while turning on the spigot with the other, beginning another sink full of laundry. Teresa told me about a shortcut to San Juan that led from near her house. I was uncertain about taking it until I saw a portly couple step onto the narrow dirt path. I followed them through the low hills outside of town, through the green scrub brush and the occasional cactus. In less than an hour, I came over a low rise and found the village of San Juan. Families were spread out across the hillside.

  I sat down on a rock near the top of the hill and watched the community that had gathered. Kids chased each other while grandmothers set out plates of food. The sour smell of chicha mingled with the starchy smell of boiled potatoes. A skinny guy in a dirty shirt played an accordion and sang a sad song about a cholita. I didn’t understand the words, but could tell it was sad by the tone of his voice. Beyond the families was the road that Lucas and I had arrived on the previous night. A steady line of faded and scratched buses deposited passengers, then lumbered away for more. I recognized people from Kantuta, but no one I knew well enough to greet. I was the only non-Bolivian on the hillside that afternoon. To me, this was a cultural experience, but to everyone else, this was a reunion, a family get-together at a place that meant something to them. I was an observer, not a participant. It was interesting, but left me cold. After an hour, I walked the long path back to Kantuta.