Cattle brandin'

A few weeks ago some friends invited us to ride along with them to brand cattle. As usual, we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into, but we couldn't turn down the opportunity. The night before, our friend stopped us on the street and said, "What time should we head out in the morning.....four?" Then he told us that his entire extended family was going, and we realized we were in for a long and eventful day. Folks here generally keep their herds on land a few hours' drive from Moro Moro. The land isn't good for growing crops, so they keep cattle there so that they don't cause trouble in the cultivated fields closer to town. However, the cattle are set loose to roam over hundreds of acres of hilly, cactussy, scrubby land, so searching for them whenever you want to check on them, butcher them, or brand them is quite a chore. We set out before sunrise so that there would be plenty of time to round them all up.

Upon arriving, everyone in the group was fed bread and coffee. An hour later, we were all ordered to sit down again to a meal of boiled potatoes, hard-boiled eggs, and enormous (and delicious) chunks of cheese. We were apparently the only ones who got a huge kick out of the large fellow sitting in the tire.

After breakfast, our host went to look for a young bull that had been injured in a fight with another bull. The bull's rear leg looked to be broken and completely unable to sustain any weight, and everyone agreed that what was needed was a little impromptu butchering. In the picture above, two guys had roped the front and back legs of the bull and are forcing it to lay down on its side.

For some reason, Andy was selected to be the one to hold the bull's head down while the other two guys in this picture did the actual killing. You can see here that Andy is trying his best to get as far away from what's about to happen as possible, but he's got to hold onto that head. If they weren't too graphic, I'd love to show you the succession of photos starting with this one. Andy's left leg keeps getting farther and farther back until he's basically doing the splits, as if by getting that one leg out of there he could keep blood off his hands.

Can you see the blood in his beard?

After the butchering was done, the rest of the cattle were rounded up, and we drank fresh milk, straight out of the cow (notice the milking going on in the photo).

This little guy was determined to rope a calf.

A dozen or so cows had to be branded. Guys would get a rope around the head and back feet of each one, pull it to the ground, then the host would brand it, and, for some reason we never fully understood, he would then rub fresh cow poop on the mark.

After each cow was branded, someone would feed it a cupful of chicha....

...and if it was a heifer, the hostess would pretend to milk it into her hat and walk around pretending to give everyone in the group a drink. We understood this ritual to be like a prayer asking for a blessing on this cow's fertility and productivity.

The smallest calves (one male and one female) were laid down in this little cuddling position in another sort of fertility ritual, and then the owners marked them by snipping a corner off each of their ears.

After the branding and the closing ceremony, one man was chosen to be the "cowboy." In the past, this person apparently was the one who would lead the cattle back to their feeding grounds. He would then come back with milk, cheese, and other food and offer it to the guests. On this day, the cowboy didn't actually lead the cows away, but he disappeared for a while, then came back and served us all bread and cheese. Finally, we ate a late lunch and sat around talking about branding all afternoon, and then drove home. Apart from spending most of the day completely confused about what was going on around us and wondering why people were doing the things they were doing, we had a really good time!

I also saw this awesome bug.

Bolivians

I had this idea about a year ago to do a few blog posts spotlighting some of the interesting people we come in contact with in rural Bolivia. I’m just now getting around to doing the first one, and at our current rate of posting, it will probably be the only one. Still, here goes…

Leónides López and Josefa Vásquez Claros

Leónides and Josefa were both born and raised near Abra Grande, one of Moro Moro’s many isolated rural communities. They each married young (not to each other), and were both widowed after their children had all grown up and moved away. They then became a couple, moving into the homestead where Leónides was born, and where he had raised his children with his first wife. Leónides and Josefa grow several acres of potatoes and corn, care for cattle, pigs, and chickens, and tend a small vegetable and herb patch. Leónides is in his 80s and walks with a cane, leaving Josefa (who is in her 70s) with a heavy burden. She does the typical work of rural Bolivian women—cooking, cleaning, gathering of water and firewood, caring for animals, butchering, food processing and storage, and helping with planting, weeding, harvesting, and carrying crops to market—while also taking on the main responsibility for the farm that her husband can no longer carry by himself.

Josefa posing with the mound of purple corn she is tending while it dries in the sun.

Leónides looking thoughtful (he carries needles and thread in his hat for emergency clothing repair situations and for sewing up bags of produce).

We began work on a water project with Leónides and Josefa and four other families in August of this year. The families were worried from the beginning that they had very few workers in the community since most of the residents were elderly. Communities building water projects with our institution’s support are required to dig ditches to bury the pipe (in this case, nearly a mile of ditch had to be dug, all by hand), assist masons in building tanks and other infrastructure, and cook meals to feed the workers (and us). We are normally very firm about this requirement, but in this case we offered to help as much as we could with this work. The first work day began as we thought it might, with a hired mason, Andy, and I doing most of the work of clearing out trees and spiny bushes to make the path where the pipe would be laid. Around noon, Josefa and another woman from the community arrived to the worksite with a mountain of food for our lunch. Josefa apologized for not being around to help in the morning. She told me that she usually gets up before dawn, but doesn’t find time to eat breakfast until midmorning, after getting back from checking on cattle or crop fields, carrying water, and cutting firewood, and after lighting the kitchen fire and peeling potatoes or grinding corn. She spent the rest of the afternoon swinging a machete with the rest of us, then sent us home with two enormous grocery bags full of potatoes, onions, and corn, as a thanks for all of our “hard work.”

Leónides can’t get around on the rough and steep slopes that most of the water system work is done on, so he didn’t do much of that work. However, in spite of his ailing body, he seems to spend very little time sitting or lying around. When we would show up in the morning, he was often already in the field near their house, harvesting corn. Even though he could only harvest at maybe a quarter of the speed of a younger person, he spent every free moment in that field until it was all harvested, shuffling back to the house for meals with his hands bleeding from rubbing against the stiff stalks. When water project meetings were held at their house, while the rest of us sat around waiting on late-comers, Josefa and Leónides never sat still, always tending to the corn they were drying on their patio or carrying food to their animals.

Our last two visits to Josefa and Leónides were for parties: one unofficial and one official ch’alla (celebration of thanksgiving) for the completion of their water system. The unofficial one was thrown in honor of my parents’ visit to Moro Moro. Josefa and another woman in the community both butchered enormous pigs (that's right: TWO pigs were butchered to feed the four of us plus the 15 or so community members). They invited us to bless their tank with them, which required drowning it in beer and chicha. Josefa lugged an enormous basket full of canned beer up to the tank for the blessing, and, as custom dictates, would not let the party end until all the beer was gone. Neither of the four of us felt like drinking much, so that tank got an extra helping of blessing from us.

Andy, my stepdad, and I toasting and looking for a way out of drinking all that beer.

It’s normal to splash a little of each cupful of beer or chicha onto the ground or onto the thing being blessed, and then to drink the rest. But Josefa noticed how small my sips were and how big my "splashes" were, and started watching us pretty closely. She also managed to, without speaking the same language, convince my not-the-dancing-type parents to join in the obligatory one-song dance.

Josefa keeping a close eye on me to make sure I'm enjoying my chicha fully.

Josefa, Andy, me, my mom, and stepdad dancing.

Group shot at the first ch'alla. Leónides is next to Andy, and Josefa is out front, posing proudly with her bottle of chicha.

Then, a week later, they did it all over again, throwing the party for the “official” ch’alla. For this party, they cooked and prepared drinks for 50 or so people, hired a DJ, and even got the mayor to drive out and join the party.

We often wonder where we really stand with people like Josefa and Leónides. We spend weeks visiting their homes every day. They cook for us, and we sit in their kitchens or bedrooms and eat with them. We are often present when some of their worst community conflicts blow up. We share with them in the profound experience of seeing water flow out of a faucet at their home for the first time after a life of lugging jugs and buckets up and down long paths. The families we have worked with are experts at hospitality and showing gratitude, so much so that we often finish a water system and feel like more has been given to us than what we earned with our efforts. But still, we’re so different, and it’s sometimes hard to understand what kind of relationship we’ve built when each project is over. However, Josefa, Leónides, and their neighbors are so kind to us and so open with their lives that we feel certain that we’ve built a genuine relationship with them, albeit a nontraditional one. The last time I saw Leónides, he had latched onto my arm and was almost crying because he thought that, since we had just celebrated the end of the water project, we might not go back to visit him. It felt like an expression of real affection, and it made us realize that we might mean more to people like him than we can really understand. Josefa and Leónides know how to take dirt, water, and air and make almost all the food, clothing, shelter, furniture, and tools they need to live--not just to survive, but to live a full and dignified life. I respect them enormously for this, and feel so thankful that they respect two bumbling foreigners enough to invite them into their homes and lives.

Joys of June and July

Here are a few sources of joy that we've been blessed with lately....

Baby goats with our friend Lider and his family (photo: Jeremy Good)

Learning a new skill – threshing oats! The oats are hand-cut and carried to the threshing floor to have horses trample them. We got a kick out of our little friend somersaulting in the straw between hose passes (photo: Jeremy Good)

Building the tools needed (here in Bolivia, we say "solucionando")– tubing, valve from old motorcycle tube, and tire pressure gauge to test water pressure (photo: Jeremy Good)

Celebrating the Winter Equinox by trying to coax the Sun back. After a dinner of grilled chorizos (sausages), churiqui (chicken gizzard), and choclo (corn-on-the-cob), jumping over the bonfire made in the middle of the street is a must!




A hike to the top of the "Pachapata", our local waterfall. After 3 hours of hiking, we hoped to reach the ledge, but it was just too difficult, so we settled for a dip in the stream 20 meters upstream from the 180ft drop!




Visitors to share our work and lives with, and their reminders to stop and enjoy the scenery (photos: Gloria Showalter)

"A very touristy place"

In March we decided we needed a weekend away from our sometimes too-small town. We decided to check out a small city called Comarapa, about a 4-hour motorcycle ride away. We had seen it on a poster promoting tourism in the area. Also, Andy had heard that there was a large man-made lake near it, and he remembered it being described as “un lugar bien turístico” (a very touristy place). I will never again hear the phrase, “un lugar bien turístico,” without laughing uncontrollably.

We decided to head for Comarapa on a Friday afternoon, thinking we’d stay the whole weekend and get back late Sunday night. The four-hour motorcycle trip was uncomfortable; even the small amount of luggage we were carrying (one change of clothes each plus a couple books), when strapped on the tiny rack on the back of the motorcycle, forced me to ride Andy like a backpack (or vice versa). Still, the weather was nice, so we were in high spirits. We arrived in Comarapa at about 2 in the afternoon. Since we didn’t know our way around, we stopped at the central market to get drinks and ask questions. We have discovered that, in rural Bolivia, it’s always best to ask directions from three or four different people (we think this is both because we don’t understand Spanish as well as we think we do, and because for some reason rural Bolivians offer directions even if they have no idea what you’re talking about). So, we asked the lady that sold us drinks, a couple resting on a street corner, and a shop-owner what they knew about the lake. The answers were all the same. Yes, it’s a beautiful lake. Yes, it’s a “lugar bien turístico.” Yes, there are places to swim. There might even be a place to stay.

Excited by the prospect of a dip in a real live lake and maybe even a boat ride (Andy had heard there were boats for rent), we headed toward the lake, another 15 minutes passed the city on a dusty, bumpy dirt road. We arrived at a point overlooking the lake and could see that it was, indeed, a real lake. We could see the dam on the far side, and a couple buildings near it. “Hey maybe that’s where they rent boats!” I exclaimed. Andy nodded hopefully inside his helmet.

Comarapa lake: great views…and that’s about it.

As we neared the dam, however, we started having doubts. There was no one there. No one. And it was a beautiful, hot, sunny day, perfect for swimming or boating. We got to the dam and stopped to look around. No one. We were close to the buildings now, and both suspected but did not voice what turned out to be the truth: they were abandoned. Nothing. Nada. We pulled into an overgrown driveway at one of the buildings. “Where’s the boat launch?” Andy asked no one in particular. We both started laughing and shaking our heads.

Comarapa Lake Boat Launch and Resort...or not

He turned the motorcycle around. “Surely there’s a place to swim,” I said. We were still hopeful. We stopped again on the dam, this time appreciating it as possibly the only thing worth seeing.

Comarapa dam: "Worth the trouble."

“Hey look!” I said, pointing at a little outcropping of land about halfway down the lake, back the way we had come. “There’s a road leading down to that little peninsula, and it looks like nice grass right up to the water. I bet we can swim there.”

“Let’s check it out,” Andy replied, firing up the motorcycle.

We found the entrance to the road and followed it down to the water’s edge. I stripped down to my bathing suit and sandals. Andy removed his shoes. We walked closer and looked around.

There was nothing to do but laugh. The whole area surrounding the water’s edge was covered in cow patties and discarded condoms. Just next to what I had, from afar, declared as the “swimming beach,” a line of rusty barbed wire filed into the water and disappeared. We could see more fence-posts farther out. Everything smelled weird. We laughed again.

The swimming beach.

“But look!” I said, pointing at a trail running off into the woods and toward the other side of the peninsula. I dashed down it, hoping beyond all reason that something more promising would meet me on the other side of the trees. I got about 5 steps before a giant thorn bush reached out and snagged my leg. I started bleeding. Moving forward, pushing more thorny branches out of the way, I heard Andy mumble something about piles of used condoms. A few more steps, and the path ended at another shoreline. This one was more open, fewer trees, no barbed-wire, less stink, but definitely not a beach, per se. As hot and dry as we felt, we couldn’t bear the thought of putting a single body part into that water, not knowing what tetanus or STD agent was waiting on the lake bottom. We found our way back to the motorcycle.

“Well, we’re here,” Andy said. “We may as well relax a bit.” He took out his book and, laying his jacket down for a pillow, lay down and started reading. I did the same. “Watch out for that cow patty,” Andy warned me. I scooted over a bit, sitting myself down in the only cow-patty-free spot available. “It’s a really nice day,” Andy said, salvaging. “Yeah,” I agreed, enthusiastically. We read for another 30 seconds. Ants began invading every part of my clothes. I said nothing, forcing myself to read. I glanced up at Andy over the top of my book. He was swatting at them, too, but, like me, pretended he was cool with it. We read for another 30 seconds. “Okay, okay, okay,” we both said at once, standing up. “Enough.” We beat the ants off of each others’ backs, put our clothes, shoes, and helmets back on, and got out of there.

We arrived back in Comarapa and decided to look for a hotel. We passed a pharmacy with a lone woman attendant at the counter. I decided to fake a need for ibuprofen in order to get some (hopefully) accurate information. I went in, asked for the ibuprofen, and started asking about the woman’s baby, who was sleeping on a couch nearby. She asked where I was from, if I had any children myself, and what we were doing in Comarapa. I told her we were looking for a place to stay…might she have a recommendation? “Oh yes,” she said. “There’s really only one nice hotel in town.” I felt hopeful. She seemed to know what she was talking about. She told me where the nice hotel was.

“What else is there to do around here?” I asked. “You know, are there places to see, museums, lakes, fun things like that?”

“Oh…” she replied. “Yeah, there are a few things.” She listed off the following tourist attractions, declaring them all “worth the trouble:” the lake, the boat rental shop (“go to the hospital and ask for so-and-so”), the cactus forest (back the way we came), and a place up the valley where you could rent a cabin for the night.

“Cabins?” I asked. “How do we get there?” She described the trip: two more hours up into the woods, and you have to go to the mayor’s office to ask for the key.

“Key? Key for what?”

“For the cabin, of course.”

“Oh, so there’s not a person there that runs the place?”

“No, no,” she replied, smiling. “It’s just an empty cabin, but you can take your own blankets and food and cooking pots and stuff. It’s really nice! Oh, and while you’re at the mayor’s office, ask them for the tourist pamphlet. It has pictures and information about all this stuff.” Thanking her, I went to report my findings to Andy.

“So you can rent boats!” he exclaimed. “I knew I had heard that somewhere!”

We checked into the nice hotel. “Nice!” Andy agreed. “You know what the trick is,” he declared. “You have to have an actual conversation with someone, and then ask them for directions and information. Maybe if you don’t actually have a conversation with someone, they don’t feel obliged to answer your questions.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “She really unloaded some information on me, and look! She was right about the hotel.”

We headed for the hospital, jabbering about how nice and relaxing it would be to paddle out to the middle of the lake and just float all day. We found the hospital. Asking around to anyone who would talk to us, we received the same response from all: “Boats? What kind of boats? No, no, there’s never been any kind of boat rental place here.”

Dejected, we headed for the mayor’s office, deciding we may as well check out the cabin thing and the pamphlet thing. The mayor’s secretary seemed busy, so we looked around a bit, hoping we might see a stack of pamphlets for the taking. “Can I help you?” she finally asked. We asked her about the cabins. “Yeah, that place is really run-down. You don’t want to go there.” And the pamphlets...? “…” Blank stare.

“You see,” I explained, “we heard that there was a pamphlet describing all the tourist attractions in the area.” Nothing. She directed us to the office of FDF, an institution that we have experience with and that works in tourism development. We found the FDF office. No pamphlets. We stood in the street outside the office. “Well….” Andy said, “what now?” It was late afternoon, too early to eat dinner, give up, call it quits, and just go to bed. We had seen an internet café near the mayor’s office, so we headed there. I googled “turismo Comarapa.” When the spotty connection finally spat out the search results, I was not surprised: cabin rentals, beautiful man-made lake, boat rentals, pamphlets available in the mayor’s office, all of it almost word-for-word what the pharmacist had told me. I began to wonder if the people doing research for tourism websites had also stopped and consulted the pharmacist. An hour into our internet time, Andy’s computer still hadn’t accomplished so much as opening one email, so we called that quits, too.

We weren’t hungry yet, but the one thing we were sure of finding was food, so we ate dinner and bought some snacks, planning to spend the rest of the evening in the hotel with our books. We flipped on the 15-inch TV to find that English-speaking HBO came through on the hotel’s cable. We were so pleasantly-surprised that (I kid you not) one of us declared, “This is awesome!!” A new movie was just starting: the one where that wrestler/actor plays a soldier who returns home to find his town being controlled by an evil casino owner, and the wrestler/actor/soldier gets together a rag-tag bunch of high school drop-outs and takes down the bad guy’s mob and becomes sheriff and makes all his drop-out buddies deputies and whisks the small-town beauty (who had given up on love) off her feet. You know? That one. Great show.

The next day (Saturday, day 2 of our planned 3-day weekend), we ate breakfast and could think of nothing to do but head home. We stopped at the cactus forest on the way. It was worth the trouble. It was a steamy day, and about half-way home we found a quiet little spot along a river to eat our picnic lunch and go for a swim. All in all, a pretty nice trip.

Crossing the bridge over the river (where we finally got to swim)