Sunday, December 16, 2007

Prince of Peace

After being home sick for a week and a half, I finally got back to volunteering on Thursday, and it was great to see the kids at CAT and at Nasareth again. It was sad to see them for only 2 days before leaving, but I was glad that I was able to. The boys at Nasareth told me on Friday that they didn't want me to go home for Christmas and that I wasn't allowed to, but after I promised to bring them back some candy from Canada they changed their minds and said I could go (although one boy did insist on coming with me). I'm actually not fully better yet, but I am slowly getting there. Claudia, my doctor friend from Bible study, is determined to make me healthy again and said that if she can't then she's not a doctor. Since the injection didn't make me better faster, as of yesterday I am now on some experimental cough syrups that she gave me. I don't yet know if they work, but they certainly both taste disgusting, which is usually a good sign.

Yesterday, I went downtown to help out at the baby washing, and discovered that it was on early. However, due to the number of people, there was no actual washing going on. They were, however, handing out bread and milk to each person who came through. Mickey, the guy who runs it, said that he had prepared 200 litres of milk for the day! For over an hour, there was a very steady stream of people coming through the tent, getting their piece of bread and cup of milk, and moving on. I couldn't believe the number of people! Someone explained to me that a lot of campesinos (people from the country) come into the cities around Christmas time, since many churches run different food programs at this time of year. This certainly explained the increased number of people. They were also handing out presents to all the children and babies that came through. Each present consisted of a small plastic bag (about 1/4th the size of a grocery bag) filled mostly with popcorn, a few small cookies and candies, and a small toy. Nevertheless, each kid seemed happy to receive it, and most ate the popcorn once they got outside of the tent. A few older people asked for the presents too, but we had to explain that they were only for the children. The baby washing will resume the 2nd week of January, and I am looking forward to going to it when I get back.

I mentioned a few weeks ago about the political situation in Bolivia, and the difficulties that there have been here surrounding the rewriting of the constitution. Well, since I wrote about it, things have gotten worse. The Constitutional Assembly, which was the body elected to rewrite the constitution, finally wrote up a draft new constitution, about two weeks ago I think. The problem is that they did it without the presence of members of the opposition parties, who had boycotted the meetings. Although the new constitution will still need to be approved, article by article, in a general referendum, there have been huge protests against it in the western, wealthier half of the country. Police abandoned the city of Sucre two weeks ago after riots broke out and one officer was killed, I don't yet know if they have returned. The western regional governments, lead by Santa Cruz, have been protesting against the new constitution and the president. Due to road blocks, items such as rice and vegetables have had a harder time getting into Cochabamba, with the result being that prices have increased (the price of rice has doubled here in Coch, apparently). The western governments have been asking for more autonomy from the federal government, and this week the regional governor of Santa Cruz declared autonomy for the department of Santa Cruz. Although neither troops nor police have been sent in, Evo Morales, the president, has declared this action to be illegal. This conflict is also flaring up racial divisions in the country. The wealthier, right-wing western half of Bolivia is made up of mixed-race, European descendants, and the poorer, left-wing eastern half of the country is made up more of indigenous Aymara and Quechua indians (Evo is himself Aymara, the first indigenous president in the country's history). No small number of political commentators, both inside and outside the country, believe that with the polarization that is occuring, Bolivia could be approaching civil war. Lesley Kaiser, a missionary to Bolivia from my church back in Toronto, has been in the country since I was born, and has seen the many difficulties that Bolivia has faced. She told me that she has never been as worried as she is now about Bolivia.

With this in mind, I attended church (the international one) this morning, and watched a play about the Christmas story. After the play, the congregation rose with the choir to sing "Hark the Herald Angel Sings," a song which I have heard hundreds of times, and yet this morning it had an entirely different meaning to me. When I got to the words "peace on earth," tears came to my eyes. In North America, where Christmas is surrounded by commercials, advertisements, and messages and songs about the "spirit of Christmas" (I believe giving is supposedly the "spirit of Christmas", which usually translates into buying yet more things), I have to admit that I sometimes find it hard to fully appreciate Christmas. We read the words "peace on earth" in cards, on posters in stores, everywhere, usually right beside signs informing us of the latest sales. Here, free from all of that, I have been much better able to appreciate the Christmas story. Here, in a country that seems to be edging closer and closer to civil war, the words of the angel choir, singing in front of the shepherds, are so much more powerful. "'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.'" Just before this, an angel declared to those shepherds, "'Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all people. Today in the town of David a Saviour has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.'" I have realized, perhaps this year more than any other, that this story is for all people. But it is not just a story, one that sounds nice and warms our hearts as we think about babies and animals and angels. It is a powerful story about a God who is not indifferent to the suffering of humans, choosing to come down and partake in our life, and who chose the name Immanual, which means "God with us" (see Matthew 1:23-24). He was born in a stable, and 33 years later he died alongside common criminals. As I reflect on this world, the poverty and injustice that exist, racial divides, genocide, civil war in some countries and increasing threat of it in others, the hopelessness that exists in many places, this message of peace and love and hope from a God who is with us, no matter who we are or where we find ourselves, seems not only more relevant, it seems like something worth celebrating. C.S. Lewis once said that the Christmas story is either complete lunacy, or else the sinlge most important event in all of human history. I think I am able to see now just how important, how significant, it truly is.

I would like to close, once again, with some words of Henri Nouwen. They are from his book Compassion, and I hope you enjoy them.

"Jesus' whole life and mission involve accepting powerlessness and revealing in this powerlessness the limitlessness of God's love. Here we see what compassion means. It is not a bending toward the underprivileged from a privileged position; it is not a reaching out from on high to those who are less fortunate below; it is not a gesture of sympathy or pity for those who fail to make it in the upward pull. On the contrary, compassion means going directly to those people and places where suffering is most acute and building a home there. God's compassion is total, absolute, unconditional, without reservation. It is the compassion of the one who keeps going to the most forgotten corners of the world, and who cannot rest as long as he knows that there are still human beings with tears in their eyes. It is the compassion of a God who does not merely act as a servant, but whose servanthood is a direct expression of his divinity."

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

There Used to be a Glacier Here

This has been an interesting and slightly difficult week and a bit for me. Last week I only managed to go to the homes I'm at once, on Monday. Tuesday through to Friday I was home sick. The amoebas weren't the problem, thankfully, it was the annoying cold that I have been dealing with for the past month that came back last Tuesday and was worse than before. So I finally caved in and took some time off of work. This was hard to do, because I feel a little useless when I'm just at home doing nothing, but I realized that had I just taken the time to rest and recover two weeks ago, I probably would have only needed 2 days instead of almost a whole week. This also meant that I had to miss the camping trip with the boys from Nasareth, which I wasn't exactly happy about, but when I called to tell them I wouldn't be coming they said that they understood. Wednesday afternoon I met with a Bolivian friend of mine, Claudia, who got her doctor papers about a month ago, and she did a check-up for me. She prescribed a few different drugs and also put me on a strict diet, and by Friday I was feeling better.

Since I was feeling better on Friday, I decided that I would be okay to visit La Paz, especially since Claudia didn't seem to think there would be a problem with it (provided that I was better). So Friday night I took a "bed bus" to La Paz. They don't really have beds, just seats that recline farther and you have a lot more leg room than on a normal bus. Sadly though, I didn't sleep too well on the bus, and so when I arrived in La Paz on Saturday morning, I was sick with a cold again. The other possibilities for my being sick are the relatively quick change in altitude of almost 4000ft, or a combination of the lack of sleep and the change in altitude. But despite being sick, it was great to hang out with Kim again before she left. Saturday after breakfast we went into town to check out the "witches' market" and the nearby touristy shops. The witches market, also known as the black market (think "black magic", not illegal stuff), wasn't quite as strange as I was expecting, although I don't think I saw the whole thing, and I have to admit that the dried dead baby llamas, which almost every vendor had on display, were a tad on the gross side. Apparently they are buried under new houses to bring good luck.

We grabbed lunch and ice cream in town, and then went back to the house where we relaxed and watched some movies in the afternoon. Kim and I were staying with Julie and James, a married couple and friends of Kim from back home in New Zealand. They were very nice, and invited us to go to a Christmas party with them Saturday night, which we were happy to attend and was a lot of fun. Although it was kind of odd to be surrounded by so many gringos, something that hasn't happened very often since finishing language school. On Sunday, James and Julie decided to take us to a mountain, and drove us up to the site of an old ski resort. I was very glad that they had a jeep with 4-wheel drive, which was a definite necessity given the road quality at some places. At around 17,400 feet, this was the definitely the highest I have ever been in my life (not counting flying in planes). The view was absolutely gorgeous, the nearby mountains topped with snow, and a view of El Alto in the distance as it spilled into La Paz (La Paz in situated in a valley, and El Alto is the much poorer city situated on the plateau just above it). I asked about the ski resort, which when it operated used to be the highest in the world, because I wasn't sure how it was possible to ski when there was only 2-10cms of snow on the ground. I was then told that there used to be a glacier on the mountain, but that it had since melted. All that was left was the few centimeters of snow at our feet.

Despite knowing about Global Warming, and seeing photos and stuff in An Inconvenient Truth, it is entirely different thing when you are standing in only a few centimeters of snow, on a mountain that used to be home to a glacier. I don't even know what this mountain looked like with a glacier, and I have a difficult time imagining it. All I can picture is what I saw, a thin coating of snow with smooth rocks jutting out here and there. I remember reading a few weeks ago that there is another mountain glacier nearby, the runoff from which many people in El Alto (who don't have running water in their houses) depend on as their source of water. The problem is that, due to Global Warming, the glacier is melting. Scientists predict that by 2010-2015, there will be significant water shortages in El Alto, leaving many (i.e. tens of thousands if not more) without a source of water. Standing in a place where another glacier near El Alto used to be, this prediction suddenly seemed a lot more, well, predictable. The saddest thing about this is that, with Bolivia's population of only 8 million, most of whom don't own cars but take public transit, and a good percentage of cars/cabs/buses operating on natural gas, Bolivia is not to blame for the environmental damage that could in as little as 3 years leave thousands of its people without water. The damage was done elsewhere, in much richer nations, but the price of our indifference (or inaction) is being paid here, by people who can't afford to pay for it. Yes, I suppose as Canadians we may be a tad upset that our polar bear population is threatened by increasing temperatures, but most of us have probably never seen a live polar bear outside of the zoo, and we'll still likely have drinking water after the zoo is the only place polar bears still live, so I wonder how motivated we really are to affect change. For Bolivians though, who didn't cause the damage but will be suffering a lot more from it, the story will be quite different.

It was nice to see snow again, and has made me look forward to coming home for Christmas. It's hard to believe that I've been here for over two months, and that next Wednesday I will be arriving in Toronto.

Monday morning I said goodbye to Kim as she got in a cab destined for the airport, and then I made my way to the bus terminal to return to Cochabamba. In the evening there was a goodbye party for Alicia, who leaves tomorrow to return home to the US (Chicago if my memory serves). Claudia was at the party, and was sad to hear that I was once again sick. I took today off to recover, again, and I will be meeting with her later this afternoon to receive an injection of some antibiotics that should make me better. As this is my last week to volunteer before Christmas break, I am really hoping that I will be okay to go in tomorrow. Part of me just wants to go in anyway, but I also don't want to get the kids I'm working with sick. It's hard though, because I haven't seen them now in over a week, and I miss them. I guess I'll just have to see what happens.

I'll finish off with a few pictures from my trip up the mountain on Sunday, enjoy!

Julie, James and their wonderful Jeep. The mountain behind them is where there used to be a glacier.

Two neighbouring mountains. The top picture also shows the road that we drove up.

Kim and I on the mountain.

Taken from farther up the mountain (walking up was not easy at 17,400ft), looking down at the old ski lodge, now abandoned, and the valley in the distance.

Sunday, December 2, 2007

I used to think that amoebas were these cool...

...little one-cell organisms, that you learned about in science class, and they were the "simplest form of life." Not terribly exciting, for me at least, but kinda cool at least. And then, this week, I discovered that I had amoebas. I discovered this because it's actually not very good at all for you to have amoebas, so your body tries to get rid of them, and as a result you feel (and are) quite sick. This was not the ongoing flu that I have been fighting off, this was something new. So while I was feeling relatively fine (with the execption of my flu) Monday through Wednesday, I wasn't feeling so good Thursday, and Friday I felt terrible. In addition to stomach/digestive tract related-issues (I'll leave the description at that and spare you the details), I also felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to my back, shoulders, legs and head. So I called Kimber, the person who's sort of looking after me while Tyson and Carolina are away, and she took me to a labratory. I gave them some samples, and ten minutes later I was handed a little report with the result: amoebas. Since Kimber has had them before she knew exactly what to get, and since you don't need a prescription for anything here we went straight to the pharmacry, where I picked up a treatment for the amoebas as well as a painkiller Kimber said was really good. When I got home, I took a gravol for my stomach, waited 30 minutes for the gravol to kick in before eating a very small amount of soup for dinner, took my amoeba meds and the painkiller, and I was in bed by 5:30.

By lunchtime Saturday I actually felt pretty good, and by the evening (after the painkiller had worn off), I not only still felt good, but hungry as well. I even felt good enough to go out for dinner with Kim and Ludwe (Ludwe is a Bolivian who attends the Thursday night Bible studies). We were planning to go to an Italian restaurant, but Ludwe convinced us instead to go to a place he knew, and I'm glad he did. They served wonderful, delicious wood-fired pizzas, the best pizza I've had here, and it also ranks pretty high by Canadian standards. It was awesome, and although I didn't eat very much, I will definitely be going back sometime.

You can get amoebas by drinking infected water (the tap water here needs to be boiled for 10mins before you can drink it), eating infected food, or eating food that has been washed in the water but the water hasn't dried off yet. Street food is a good possibility, but salad in a restaurant could be just as likely be the cause. And since amoebas apparently have up to a two week incubation period, I really have no idea where I got them from. Nevertheless, I think I'm going to cut back on the street food just as a general precaution.

On Wednesday night I went with Kim and Alicia to Casablanca, a cafe/bar/restaurant in town that has live jazz on Wednesday nights. Although the jazz was pretty good, we didn't end up hearing very much, because we weren't in the main room (there were no free tables) and the jazz players were. However, we weren't too upset, since the main room was also filled with cigarette smoke (I never realized how much I apreciated the anti-smoking laws in Ontario untill now), and we had a good time anyway.

On Thursday night at the Bible study, we did a send-off for Kim who is leaving Cochabamba on Tuesday. We surprised her with fresh fruit and chocolate fondue from a restuarant Kim and I had been too, and she was very happy. I am very sad that Kim is leaving, as she has been my best friend down here, and I am going to miss her a lot. She will be spending a month in Florida, and then in January heading to Calgary for up to a year where she will be working and snowboarding. She was originally supposed to stay here until January and go directly to Calgary, but she has been sick and had bad migraines quite frequently and been unable to volunteer very much, so she felt it was best to leave early for the sake of her health. She will, however, be in La Paz until next Monday, so this coming weekend I am going to go to La Paz, which I have wanted to see anyway, and visit her there.

Lately there have been a lot of people coming and going, and it has been a little difficult. Last Friday, Joel left for Oruro. Kim leaves Tuesday, Peter & Karen leave Friday for Oruro, and Alicia is going back home to Boston on the 12th. It is hard to say goodbye to so many friends, and then I realize that I too will eventually leave for good. It must be harder though for the Bolivians in our Bible study, they are always here and we always come and go. I suppose they're used to it, but in a culture where it is quite strange to move far away from family I wonder just how used to it they can get.

This Sunday afternoon I went with Kim and Ludwe to see a professional soccer game, which was fun and only cost 10Bs. Cochabamba's team, Wilsterman, was playing the team from Beni, and sadly they lost 2-1. It was very impressive though, and both teams played quite well. Afterwards, we met up with some others and grabbed dinner.

This week on Wednesday I am going to be going camping with the boys from Nasareth. We are leaving Wednesday afternoon and coming back either Friday or Saturday, we'll know when on Friday. All of the boys and almost all of the staff at Nasareth are going, and I am really looking forward to it. It should be a lot of fun, and I've been told that the place we are going is quite nice and very beautiful.

I realized today that this is my second-last week of volunteering before I head home for Christmas. I can't believe how fast the time has gone! I am looking forward to seeing family and friends, and eating some good old Canadian food (I have a list of things I need to eat while home). I am also looking forward to coming back down too though, and resuming my volunteering.

Wishing everyone a good week, and to those of you with upcoming (or current) exams, good luck.