Otra Despedida

the bbc's bolivia correspondent, lola almudevar, and four bolivians were killed in a car crash early yesterday, and the reuters correspondent, a very good friend of mine, was seriously injured and is in the hospital in la paz right now. the foreign correspondent circle is so small here there's really no way to describe how much something like this rocks it.

here's jim schultz's tribute:
http://democracyctr.org/blog/

and the bbc's report:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7112875.stm

La Despedida

in my last few weeks in bolivia, i saw nutella in the grocery store and a hummer on the street. evo also announced he was going to stop the import of used clothing from other countries so that, for instance, bolivian grandfathers would not be walking around in sorority sweatshirts, but also seriously threatening to abate the size of the t-shirt piles at the el alto feria and therein a specific utility of mine in bolivia.

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i took these along with others things as signs it was the appropriate time to go. so i accepted the job in arizona and gave my notice at work, took a couple more weeks to buy a plane ticket, but eventually did click the "purchase ticket" button on the american airlines website one morning in early may. i made my last tours of the various markets, sorted through all the things i'd accumulated through the year, hurriedly packed it all up, and left the apartment with 27 chairs and five bathrooms and the country with two capitals and 500 years of suffering and oppression.

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re-entry was confusing and abrupt. i dragged myself through security at miami international at just before 6 am after the overnight flight, during which i hadn't slept much but instead talked to lily who was on the flight as well. i groggily watched the pot-bellied retirees in their tube socks shuffle alongside 35-going-on-22 latina women lacquered in white pants and gaudy baubles, each person invariably reduced to the exposed, discombobulated traveler, despite their best efforts to keep it and their carry-ons together. i stared for a while at the nutritional splatterings on the wrapper of my in-flight snack, realizing i was once again entering the world that cared about the hormone-free, the all-natural, and the transfatty. i listened to (and failed to comprehend) the several-hour long conversation on the flight from miami to seattle of the two gentlemen across the aisle comparing the respective market shares of the primary cellular communications companies. it just wasn't a topic i'd heard discussed in a while.

the summer was a hurried one that included queueing lots of music, video, and lighting, telling kids that no (happily) we didn't have the "party like a rock star" or "lip gloss" songs, but yes we did have and will (happily) play fresh prince's "summertime," re-learning how to hemorrhage dollars, and driving one sublime blue ford tractor. it ended with a fitting phoenix august morning playing marco polo and "surfing" with the 9-year-old son of friends in the backyard pool.

about the last month or so, i'll simply say that the leaves have been breathtaking, slowing the paces of both my walking and driving considerably.

and this will be all i'll write for a while, at least for myself. a combination of ecclesiastes, didion, and some conversations has provoked a certain abstention from needing to say anything, indefinite but hardly fatal. part of it's because i'm annoyed, part because i'm rather paralyzed, part because i've thought this through and analyzed it and told myself that it seems to make good, sound sense. in any event.

que les vaya muy bien. the end.

The Most Bizarre Bazaar

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The superlative market that is the El Alto 16 de Julio feria would win these awards its senior year in the yearbook:

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• Most School Spirit
• Most Sprawling
• Most Fetid
• Strangest Place in the World to Find: kids sweatshirts from semi-pro German soccer teams, Rolling Stones records, 1950s party attire, retro headlights, transistor radios, color-block leather boots, 100 million years bc and other films on dvd for 75 cents, used textbooks, stolen cell phones, small dead animals in alcohol solutions, board games, 80s one-piece colorblock swimsuits, three-piece bathroom sets, military attire, fruits and vegetables, board games, hats, school uniforms, sheepskin rugs (not processed, just dried after having been shorn), tools, pan de laja, tires, etc., etc., etc.
• Life of the Party (that was Holly's life in Bolivia).
  

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Welcome to the Feria.

The pedestrian bridge (pasarela) in the center right background was our usual starting point after a 15 minute minibus ride up from La Paz, the northernmost end of which is sprawled directly in the background. The pasarela goes over the Ceja, a road/highway that serves as the unofficial dividing line between the adjacent urban sprawls of La Paz and El Alto. The southernmost end of La Paz, by contrast, is several miles further south, a couple thousand feet lower in elevation, a few degrees warmer per its denizens' claims, and much wealthier. The rest of the city, geographically and socioeconomically, is inbetween. More or less.

This staircase was about 200 ft high, and the climb a smart welcome to the 13,500 ft altiplano altitude of El Alto. El Alto and La Paz are Bolivia's second and third largest cities, respectively, with about 900,000 people each. El Alto just surpassed La Paz in population within the last year or so and is the fastest growing city in Latin America. (Santa Cruz, in the east, is the biggest city at about 1.3 million.)

The market covers a few dozen acres, I'd guess, and is open fully every Sunday and partially on Thursdays. The usual route (i.e. the one route we could follow without getting lost) took about 4-5 hours to complete, and I bet I made it up once every month or two.

a sampling of some of the general sectors/types of stands:

dairy products and ronaldo and beckham posters

retro/antique metalware, cds and dvds in the background

the launching point: the famed clothing piles (all used, often from north american thrift stores)

shirts

nightgowns and bathrobes in the pile to the left; blankets, neckties, and swimsuits on the right

dude brought his rooster to the market.

other piles not shown here: high-waisted wool skirts, 70s polyester shirts, handbags/satchels, belts, shoes, kids clothes ... and yes, i bought (and brought back) items from each one.

typical almuerzo (lunch): meat, potatoes, soda, vegetables (optional, often ordered without)

after the clothes piles, this was the second leg

at the pink building in the upper left, we'd turn in to wander down the home depot-esque sector (including toilets, tape measures, piping), which in turn led to the electronics section

shoes (the pink pair in the foreground, purchased by me)

one of the shoes salesmen and sister/neighbor

when they're done for the day, they'll wrap up the shoes in that tarp and haul them back home.

the striped and patterned pairs in the upper right are the most ubiquitous (and, if i may, unluckiest) underwear prints sold in bolivia.

cholita sweater vendors against the andes

nevado huayna potosi

popsicles

plastics

"Pump up, air out!"

door locks, old coins, and other things metal

i bought that brown and orange dress from her.

the teal/white radio in the upper left got picked up, as did this black one on the right.

i don't think a single thing in this pile was functional. that didn't seem to be the point, though.

The Things-You-Plug-In Row

including but not limited to: electronics (dvd players, tvs of all sizes, telephones, e.g.) and small kitchen appliances (blenders, hot water pitchers). all new merchandise, but of dubious brand names.

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And on this day, we had to turn back at here, missing notably the Fancy Dress Shop and the English book stand, among other stops. I would say this is a woefully incomplete tour of the market, but in all truth there'd be no way to capture it all.

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It was the thrill of excavation at its modern-day best: plumbing the depths of a given pile, foraging through the rack in the back of the hole-in-the-wall stand, burrowing through boxes under the table to find that perfect prize at a piddling price, and all of it amidst the desultory sprawl of third-world urban development on a windswept plain at over two and a half miles high in a landlocked country. I miss this market terribly.

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The Elegant Apocalypse

The Uyuni Salt Flats, aka El Salar. The one thing I could not leave Bolivia again without seeing, as anyone who'd gone described them and the rest of the tour to me as positively surreal. Claiming Bolivia's southwest corner, just across the border from Chile's Atacama desert, they're the largest salt flats in the world, purportedly visible from space. To get there, I took a bus to Oruro, then a (rather luxe) train from Oruro to to the town of Uyuni, on the edge of the flats. In Uyuni, I joined a tour group that comprised six tourists (including myself), plus one cook and one guide, piled into a Land Rover, and drove for three days with a caravan of Land Rovers through the most remote terrain I've ever been to. The middle of nowhere, perfectly.

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This is the first time in my life I've had the urge to give a bona fide slide show: pile you all in a room and put these pictures up on some blank wall or hanging white sheet, just to give some sense of the sheer immensity of the landscape. Then, to really recreate the experience, there'd be no background noise of any kind, no one would talk, and we'd probably stay at each picture for a few minutes before clicking to the next one.

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(To this end, I did upload "large" versions of all these photos, as many are worth clicking on to be seen in their full pixelated glory, or see the set on Flickr.)

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You might or might not hate this entry: it's not as jovial as the others and might come off as pretentious or worse, as if I'm trying to be pretentious. It's certainly not intended that way. But it was a trip through an abstract landscape during which my thoughts were rather abstracted themselves, not really the time or place from which you garner cute anecdotes.
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There were many times on this trip I found myself standing, looking out at some gaping panorama, and hearing nothing save a few words, often alliterative or onomatopoetic ones, running in my head. These weren't moments where you could thoughtfully summon and sift through the last three times you saw certain words, the contexts in which they appeared, the connotations they held, and elect the most appropriate one. It was much more visceral. Landscape, word. Landscape, word. And silence.

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Endless silence.
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on the train to Uyuni

French trains pass chateaux

Bolivian, flamingoes

flamingoes in flight

metaphysical lottery numbers 8 20 21 34 46
win you this life with this color palate!

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Day 1

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the train cemetery

arthritic metal ogres, their decay on unceremonious display

"such is life"

why not die in the middle of the bolivian altiplano? i suppose.

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two emus ran across the road here

our tour guide told us the population of colchani is 200 families,

and i bought a pair of salt candleholders for $1.

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on the Salar
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twelve-thousand square kilometers of crystallized sodium chloride

scrape the salt into piles,

load the piles into the trucks.

(this tourist took a picture of other) tourists taking pictures at a salt hotel

salt tables, salt chairs

more saline furnishings

the unadulterated Salar

fish island (named from its profile from afar)

with cacti

amid salt

(the speck is a Land Rover)

every bit the elegant apocalypse

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we stayed the night in a salt hotel of our own in this village right on the Salar's edge
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quinoa fields

quinoa harvest


sunset on the Salar

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Day 2

sunrise on the Salar

leaving the Salar, heading towards the mineral lakes, flamingoes, et al.

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maybe a valiant attempt by builders at one time, maybe useless

maybe a valiant effort on the part of the shrub (can you find it?), maybe useless


a whole picture containing no living thing

nothing breathing, moving, emoting

and you realize that death isn't the opposite of life
because even death serves as testament to what was at one time

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a hop, skip, and a jump later

¡qué verde!

here

Ollagüe volcano with nicely perched cloud

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"lunch near any lagoon," per our printed itinerary

vocabulary becomes irrelevant
as there is no subtle underlying intricate balancing of tensions or ironies or nuances
to narrate

it is an utterly unambiguous place

just sweep

swoop

slope

. swathe

esp. "4. a space devastated as if by a scythe"

and then – AH!

the stark serenity is crashed by these mammoth monoliths
seemingly flung by some immense hand, dropped and plopped
and their placement seems to defy my understanding of geology
or maybe only my claim to any such understanding

but whither?

(these tracks ran perpendicular to our route.)

hello baby vicuña ...

... nibbling the back of my knee as i take the above picture

i found the activity suggestion bottom row, second from left most existential

"No hunting."

But oh, how I like my flamingo flanks. Pity.

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La Laguna Colorada

maybe it was a tragic loss. maybe it was nature.

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Day 3

the geysers

primordial, at 5 am and just shy of 16,000 ft elevation
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a slurping sulfur pit at 200˚C (392˚F), per our guide

the moon over the geysers at sunrise

this one goes out to Patty

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La Laguna Verde

And here, after a trip of near silence (despite the three pairs of travelers), we discovered our tape deck in fact worked, and this was the song that we played while leaving the Laguna Verde. It was arguably the most surreal moment of the trip.

¿a donde tu vas?

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the Tomás Laka rock garden

hello lizard.

Aristotle's Head

(can i say between a rock and a hard place?)

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home again, home again. jiggity jig.

the plaza at sunrise.