When one flower blooms, spring awakens everywhere.
John O'Donohue
I've shared some of my dramatic and challenging Bolivian adventures , but I don't think I've shared any of the beautiful, magical moments. There have been many. Here are a few.
The scene: Samaipata, a small village two hours from Santa CRuz:
What do you mean by
magical moments asks Lucy, an English tax consultant who's just arrived at the Samaipata organic herb and veggie farm. The farm will be my home for the next week. I'm planning to paint.
Twelve hours later Lucy's horizontal with food poisoning.
'Yes Megggiii ,' booms Dutch Peiter in my ear. He's the gregarious owner of the herb farm , guest cabins, and campsite.
'Yes...you are (
to be) her nurse!'
'You look like sisters' he adds laughing loudly.
Haha. Really ? Younger sister ? Me a nurse?
I do what anybody would do to help somebody who is really out of it, but I'm not a nurse. Lucy's face is the colour of concrete. Like a child she wants to hear my (travel) stories. We are sitting in the kitchen when I begin.
OK, I say.
A
magical moment happened at the police station in Sucre I tell her. It's a long story so I'll just tell you
the magical bit.
I have no intention of telling her the whole scam story, but it ends in the police station with me looking at 101 photos - on a computer- of female Bolivian criminals. Grim. Heart wrenchingly grim.
So, I'm in the police station with young Jorge, the owner of the hostal where I'm staying. He's more or less insisted I report the scam.
I view the photos- I can't identify my woman- she had two scars above her lip. Oh very bad sign says Ivan when I tell him the story . I can't identify the man either, the' illiterate
campesino' (countryman) who allegedly had just won the lottery and needed help to collect his 500.000 Boliviano fortune !!
So no identification, but never mind, we now have to make the
denuncia, that's the statement about the crime.
You wouldn't think magic could happen in such a depressing, filthy, dark, dank smelly place, but it did.
Jorge and I find our way to the office where the statements are made. It's in a kind of large stark garage basement.
Outside the open door a strong smell of urine awaits us. The forty something year old dark haired, smartly dressed secretary, sitting behind a computer, is in a foul mood- possibly menopausal?
She certainly doesn't like foreigners, so thank God Jorge is with me. I whisper to him can he please just give her the bare bones of the story, I just want the piece of paper for my insurance claim. We sit down.
Jorge agrees. He's an actor when not running the hostal. He smiles alot.
Jorge gives her 'the bare bones' and she begins to write with a pencil. He misses out chunks of the story , but
no pasenada, I only want the document, I don't want the police to go looking for the robbers, fat chance they would anyway.
The secretary - who is wearing a tight scarlet jersey under a dark austere jacket -stops writing. I notice she wears thigh clinging blue jeans and high healed black shoes. She is now obliged to speak directly to me.
'Name,' she growls with minimal eye contact.
'Address.'
'Ah, well,' Jorge's hostal I say, and give the details. She really hates foreigners.
Civil status ? Now officials always ask this in South America and I'm not sure why. Married, divorced, widowed, single? I could make a joke and say all four ! Better not.
'Estoy felizmente divorciada'
I tell her.
A grin transforms her whole face and then she starts to laugh.
She can't stop laughing. I laugh, she laughs, we laugh together and all her barriers come crashing down. We are two women on either sides of a table and in a split second we become friends.
Oh God, I didn't mean it to be that funny, I was just saying the truth. ' I am happily divorced.'
In a catholic country where divorce is.. what, very, very rare, she thinks this is hilarious.
'Felizmente divorciada jajajajajaja !' She's on a roll.
'Come back tomorrow, no, come back on Wednesday for the document,' she says, 'I'll be working on Wednesday .'
That morning I had learned from my Spanish teacher that if you say to somebody,
' estoy divorciada,' as opposed to saying
'soy divorciada,' it means you could be looking for another Mr Right.
I guess this is what's cracked her up. She wasn't expecting a dumb foreigner to be witty or God forbid, coquettish in the police station.
Lucy, the ill accountant from London smiles feebly. By the end of the story she's lying horizontal on the wooden kitchen bench. She's really not well. Two days later she seems fine and asks Peiter to book her a flight to the jungle !
I don't know how I would have survived without you she said as a parting shot. But I didn't do anything except ask her how she was, repeatedly, and tell her stories.
Other unforgettable moments...
This one needs a little back story.
Santa Cruz.
The day before leaving Santa Cruz for Samaipata Organic Herb Farm, Claudio suggest meeting again in the evening. I'm tired and still stressed after the money changer incident, and I've had a bizarre day. Life in
Mala Suerte Hostal isn't relaxing, I'm not in the mood for going out, but I agree.
Earlier in the day I got seriously lost. I've occasionally got lost in my car, but never on foot. Santa Cruz is a vast, rapidly expanding city built in rings. My friend Claudio lives in, I think, ring 13. My hotel is in ring 1, city centre.
I know I have a good sense of direction, but today it malfunctioned! I set off to return to the art shop where I'd bought my paints yesterday. I needed to change them for bigger ones.
Finding the shop the first time was a challenge, but I made it a project, so all was OK until...
all of a sudden - and without noticing- I seemed to have left lost the city centre. Where did it go ?
I found myself walking deeper and deeper into a jungle of hanging Indian skirts, swaths of billowing cloths, every electrical device imaginable, mounds of bananas, waist high baskets overflowing with sweet breads and cheesy empenadas. The noise was disorientating, , foreign, and constant. Bodies buffered me. People roughly brushed my shoulders. I griped my backpack tightly. The market stalls were so close together I couldn't see any sign of the road. Like a fly in a spiders web, for a moment it seemed like I'd been sucked into a place of no escape.
I began to feel uncomfortable, slightly anxious, and defeated. Think I'll call it a day I decided. As soon as I felt these feelings, to my astonishment, there I was right outside the shop !
Honestly, this is true. The rain poured down so after buying my paints, I hopped into a taxi.
This morning I thought it would be easy to find the shop a second time. Wrong. It was worse. Once again, at the point of deciding to give up, there I was again, right opposite the shop.
It was in retracing my steps back to my Hotel that I got completely lost. Yes I could have hopped a taxi again, but I was convinced I was 'almost there.'
I walked in the wrong direction for over two hours. Finally I sank onto a stone wall and ate a small comforting bar of chocolate with raisins. It was mid day and sticky, sweaty hot. I drank half a litre of water. On the wall on the other side of the road was written in Spanish:
'Come unto me all you who are weary and I will give you rest!'
That's when I got my sense of humour back.
Back story over.
So, that evening I could easily have said to Claudio...
'I'm tired, I've walked enough today, let's just go to the cafe in the plaza and have a drink. '
He had another idea.
'It's 7 blocks from here,' he said,' it's a lagoon, very nice.'
Claudio agrees to us taking a taxi. Phew.
The lagoon used to be a natural small lake, now it's a large concreted pond with a small fountain. There used to be paddle boats here Claudio says proudly. My first impression makes me think I'm in Russia. Stark. Unadorned. No plants or statues. I try to imagine Claudio as a child in a paddle boat, but no, he grew up in La Paz, until his parents died.
My legs are screaming to sit down, but all the benches are taken by young lovers. Finally we find one with just a single man wearing earphones . He is deeply engaged with his Iphone. Claudio asks him politely of we may share his bench.
The evening is balmy. The stars are bright. Street vendors amble past selling ice cream and sweets. Everybody else seems to be under 20, except Claudio who is 39. Some couples sit with their legs dangling in the water.
I ask Claudio how the plans for the library bus are going. An Danish organisation have given him a wreck of a bus to help him with the work he's already doing with street kids.
He starts to share his dreams for the 'Bibliobus.'
Some artist friends will paint the outside. They'll create a magical character with a magical name... your Father Christmas only comes one day a year Claudio says.. our character will come in his bus often, to different barrios . The kids will look forward to Don Spit-In Your Face coming, or whatever they decide to call him. And we can dress up, and bring dressing up clothes, and masks, and face paints, and everybody can create magical stories with the benevolent and funny Don Spit In Your Face at the centre of it all.
The bus is already kitted out as a library. With some hard work and some cash it will be on the road again soon, maybe next weekend. The roof leaks and the books are damp- but Claudio's not daunted. He even has plans for bigger buses, in which he will take tourists on alternative city tours. The buses will have a little organic cafe on board and will sell local crafts, handmade books etc etc. They will have musicians and poets performing (on board) as they circle the rings of the city, maybe they'll ending up at the butterfly farm.
Claudio is an actor and an ex street kid himself. Fifteen years ago God found him, or rather they found each other while Claudio was living in a cardboard box in a wood in Santa Cruz. He now has a degree in Drama and two daughters. He runs a successful arts space for kids in a slum district of the city. If ever there was a phoenix risen from the ashes of a life, it's Claudio.
The first thing Claudio needs to do is get a licence to drive the bus. This is almost complete.
I'm impressed. Deeply and wholeheartedly.
I'm not sure why but I tell him about the secretary in the police station. I tell him how my life is full of magical moments with people, and that's what makes my heart sing. We speak in Spanish. Me cuesta un poco, ( it's a stretch sometimes) so I keep my stories poetically short.
We leave the lagoon and the man with his Iphone stays. He's in his own world. I hope he finds a girl friend soon, or maybe he's texting her and I've got the wrong end of the stick .
There's a great bar near here Claudio tells me. I nod.
Away from the concrete lagoon, Santa Cruz street nightlife is revving up. Five minutes later we arrive at the bar. It's a student hang out named after some hallucinogenic plant, Claudio tells me laughing!
We sit outside on chairs on the uneven pavement . Inside is where the anarchists meet my young friend informs me, he's still grinning. Hash cakes coming up I wonder ?
Claudio orders two beers. It's the best beer I've ever tasted, cool, refreshing, and it comes in a very large bottle. Our conversation gets animated. The two small pizzas finally arrived. They are crispy delicious and their cheesy-herbie smell is unforgettable. We're sitting beside a narrow busy road with clunky rickety buses coming right towards me with their blinding headlights full on. Everything has a feel of the surreal tonight.
Claudio refers a few times to my
magical moment with the secretary. It's hit a nerve with him. He tells me it's all about creating magic with the kids he works with. Magic will get them to come back, magic will get them interested in reading books, taking part in drama, in dance, in painting, in enlarging their horizons.
Back at my hostal Claudio offers to come with me tomorrow morning to find the bus to Samaipata.
I'm grateful. I'm tired, but I'm feeling 100% alive.
'Friendship is always an act of
magical recognition.'
This is my version of what Irish poet and John O' Donohue said. I've added to word magical.
Here's the full quote:
'Real friendship or love is not manufactured or achieved by an act of will or intention. Friendship is always an act of recognition... in the moment of friendship, two souls suddenly recognise each other. It could be a meeting on the street, or at a party or a lecture, or just a simple, banal introduction, then suddenly there is the flash of recognition and the embers of kinship grow. There is an awakening between you, a sense of ancient knowing.'
Thank you Jorge, gracias our lady in the police station, and mil gracias quierdo Claudio.
A final PS.
On my last night in Santa Cruz, Claudio and America arrived at my 'new' hostal, Hostal Buena Suerte - Hotal Milan- same street as the hostal infierno.
Let's go said Claudio. America was already sampling the jar or blackberry jam I'd brought her from Samipata. In the street, in the pouring rain, bedside the cathedral, sat the wondrous Bibliobus. There followed an unforgettable three hours, which I will share with you in the next blog!!
