by Ursula Pike
“California, but went to college in Oregon.” I told her.
“Get out! I used to live in Portland,” she said and slapped my shoulder lightly. We found out that a few years back we had been at some of the same demonstrations against old-growth logging held in downtown Portland. It completely upended my assumptions about them when I discovered that these Catholic missionaries were hippies. I had expected straitlaced white men in suits out here passing judgment on Indigenous people. If I’d known them better, I would have asked what they thought about their work. Anyone who’d read one book about the Catholic Church in Latin America knew there existed a long, dark history. Did these cool kids ponder their place in that history as they sat across from Quechua kids teaching them to speak Spanish? I wanted someone to help guide me through the complicated experience I was having, but knew that this quick trip was not the moment to discuss it.
To return to Kantuta, Nina flagged down a truck and asked, in perfect Spanish, whether the driver was going our way. There was no room in the cab, so we climbed up onto the back, which was open. I moved slowly up the ladder because I could not see what was in the back and imagined everything from pigs to peanuts. From the top, I saw thin green sticks, ten feet long, that looked like bamboo, filling the entire truck bed. Crawling on my hands and knees and gripping onto each stick with white knuckles, I made it to a pocket of space and decided to stop moving because this pickup-stick situation was never going to be comfortable. This was not ideal, but I was relieved to know we were headed back to town.
Nina and Emilio sat toward the front of the truck bed, and the driver yelled something to them. They laughed, and the truck started moving forward. They didn’t tell me what he said or let me in on the joke. I was confused and whimpered pathetically, which, luckily, could not be heard over the sound of the truck engine revving up. The mission school disappeared into a dust cloud behind the truck.
We bounced along the rough road, and the steep green valley surrounded by tall hills seemed to narrow. From my perch, I could see the small adobe houses scattered across the landscape, the occasional tree providing shade to a home and everything surrounding it. Cattle standing behind fences made of brush and stacked wood poles chewed their dinner and ignored us. A thin old man walked slowly along the road behind a big-bellied donkey. Neither the man nor the animal acknowledged the truck. Smiling kids on the side of the road waved and yelled as we drove by. My eyes watered from the dust, and I shut them tight every few minutes for an extra second of relief.
I thought about the last two days and the people I had met. It hadn’t been the trip I dreamed of, but it had been exciting. I am riding in the back of a truck through fuckin’ Bolivia! This is awesome. Emilio and Nina were leaning against each other, looking out toward the mountains. How great that must have been to find a Bolivian to connect with, someone to help her on this adventure.
Emilio turned and handed me a small piece of one of the green sticks we were sitting on. They were both chewing on them. Looking at the stick in the fading light, I realized it was sugar cane. Sucking on a stick from the back of a truck in Bolivia was probably not a great idea. But there was no way I was going to turn this down for fear of unclean microbes. I pressed it to my lips and started to suck. At first, it tasted like wood, but slowly a sweet flavor emerged, and the more the wood softened, the more intense was the sweetness. Emilio gave me a thumbs-up and turned back to Nina. I sucked on that stupid piece of sugar cane for as long as I could stand and then dropped it over the side of the truck.
It was almost dark by the time I noticed the houses getting closer to each other and the streetlights on the side of the road as we approached Kantuta. My mouth started to water, and my gut tightened. I knew what was coming next and leaned out the back of the truck. My weak stomach didn’t like this aspect of the trip. As I held my hair, I thought: I am puking out the back of a truck in fuckin’ Bolivia. I wondered if my physical weakness looked like proof that I was unprepared for being a volunteer.
Maybe Nina said good-bye; maybe I thanked her. I don’t remember clearly because I was in pain, and it took all of my energy to get back to my small room, where I stayed for two days puking into whatever bucket Emilio could find for me. When I was well enough for the bus ride to Cochabamba, I curled up in a seat and slept the whole trip. Nina was gone by the time I moved to Kantuta to begin my work, and I never saw her again.
5
En la Noche — In the Evening
Two weeks before training ended, I turned twenty-six. Laura asked where I wanted to celebrate, and I chose Tio Lujo’s current site. We weren’t sure where Tio Lujo’s Bar would be from one weekend to the next. It moved to different spots throughout Cochabamba every few weeks. But the Westerners and expats in town always managed to find it. Information about each new location was spread between rooms at the cheap hostels and restaurants recommended by the travel guidebook everyone carried. Tio, which means uncle, ran the bar and was from Argentina, Chile, or one of those other South American countries that didn’t seem part of the Third World. His black-rimmed glasses were thick and would have looked ironic in the United States, but in a country where few people could afford glasses, there was no irony. The bar had small tables lit by candles, Spanish music playing on tinny speakers, and a menu of food that was familiar but not very tasty. I never found out why the bar moved around, but suspected it was poor management due to too much Bolivian Marching Powder. Bolivia was full of people from around the world who came specifically for the high-quality, cheap cocaine. Lujo means luxurious, and no matter what building the bar ended up in, the beers were always more expensive than anywhere else in the city. The bar probably had some other official name, but we called it Tio Lujo.
From the cab we took to Tio Lujo’s, we could see the streets filling up with people walking to the Festival of Urkupiña. Devotees of the Virgin Mary made the pilgrimage on foot to the mountain where she had appeared. It was still winter in the Southern Hemisphere, and the pilgrims wore layers of jackets and scarves.
The first round of beers arrived at the table. I hoped someone would bring up the film we all watched during training that afternoon. Blood of the Condor, or Yawar Mallku, was a 1969 Bolivian film about Quechua villagers and an agency called the Progress Corps. Before starting the film, the training director said, “This movie changed the history of the Peace Corps in Bolivia.” All twenty-six of us sat in the large meeting room, which smelled of rice and meat because it was also the lunchroom. We were two weeks from our swearing in—the moment when we held up our hands and promised to represent the United States as Peace Corps volunteers.
The black-and-white film opened with a Bolivian couple in a small earthen-walled room. The wife was young, had smooth skin, and wore a serious expression, but the husband was weathered, and slurred his words. They argued about the death of their children, and the husband blamed the wife for not having another baby. Every word they spoke was in Quechua. I had never seen an entire film in an Indigenous language, and I perked up every time I heard a word I recognized—warmi (woman) and wawa (baby).
Then the volunteers from the US showed up. Their Spanish was laughable and barely understandable. One woman wore Jackie O sunglasses and pedal pushers. We laughed. Nervously. Those ridiculous people were supposed to be us. I looked around the room. A woman nearby squinted at the screen.
“We, of the Progress Corps, have come here through many sacrifices of our own so that you can develop,” the head of the group said to a line of silent, staring village residents. He was a barrel-chested man wearing the same button-up flannel shirt in every scene. He puffed on a pipe as he spoke with controlled condescension to the Bolivians. Boxes of donated clothes were offered to the villagers, who reluctantly accepted the gifts. I thought of the US soldiers who gave blankets infected with smallpox to Native people, and wondered if the filmmaker was saying something about poisoned gifts. Some of the people in the room were paying attention, but more than a few had dozed off. Are they see
ing what I am seeing? Maybe this was my paranoid Native imagination.
The line about the sacrifices the volunteers were making for the betterment of the Bolivians sounded a little too familiar. No one had stated it so plainly, because our “sacrifice” for the sake of the Bolivians was assumed. Peace Corps volunteers were the most noble motherfuckers on the planet, or so we were told. The more that personal comforts were forgone, the further away we were from a city, from electricity, from toilets and running water, the more valuable was our sacrifice. That sentiment was as true thirty years earlier when the film was made as it was that afternoon in the cafeteria.
In the movie, the women in the village were never able to get pregnant again after visiting the clinic run by the Progress Corps. The film ended when the villagers discovered that the volunteers were “sowing death in the bellies” of the women of the community. It was an allusion to the forced sterilization of the Indigenous women. The North Americans were pulled away into the darkness by the villagers, never to be seen again.
“Remember, this was not based on a real incident,” the training director said as he switched off the television. He explained that the movie was shown widely throughout Bolivia in 1970, and it wasn’t seen as fiction. Peace Corps was asked to leave the country by the Bolivian government partly because of the reaction to the movie. Twenty years later, the organization returned, thanks to a government that was friendlier to the United States.
“Do they really think Peace Corps did…did this to women?! Is that how they see us?” a woman in the front row asked, her brow crinkled in confusion. Forced sterilization seemed beyond her comprehension. The training director assured us that it never happened and that Peace Corps never operated clinics.
While watching the film, I thought about my mother getting her tubes tied the year I was in fourth grade. I didn’t know the term tubal ligation at the time, but that’s what it was. Her baby-making days were over. She wanted me to know she was choosing it. The afternoon my mother went into the hospital, I stood on the playground imagining giant tubes like multicolored hoses snaking out of her, while a white doctor struggled to tie them together. A few months later, she enrolled in community college.
I was surprised that the other volunteers didn’t seem to know that forced sterilization was an actual practice. It wasn’t just a perfect metaphor for the genocide Indigenous people had experienced but an actual crime committed on Native women up until the 1970s. In North America, one in four Native women were forcibly sterilized. Full-blooded women were targeted first.
Although I knew that the Peace Corps had never sterilized women, I wasn’t surprised that Bolivians were suspicious of the organization’s actions. In a world where Indigenous people had been taken advantage of by foreigners and every few decades a new generation showed up promising to help, of course they wouldn’t trust volunteers from the US. But I didn’t say anything. That evening as I changed my clothes to get ready for my birthday celebration, I wondered what the other trainees would have thought if I’d said I understood why the Bolivians believed the film to be true. Would they see me as unsophisticated and backward? I knew no one would bring up the film on this night of celebration with a handful of days between us and the beginning of our service.
From the inside of the bar, I saw that the number of people in the street walking to Urkupiña had doubled in the short time I had been sitting drinking my beer. Laura sat in the seat next to me, and someone said, “Happy Birthday.” I thought about bringing up the movie, but what kind of party would it be if I talked about something as horrible as forced sterilization? Laura and I huddled in a corner with a bottle of wine. My time in Kantuta had been demoralizing, but she had had a blast during her visit to southern Bolivia. She had already put a deposit on an apartment. I drank my wine and hoped that I didn’t look as dejected as I felt. The bar filled up with volunteers in town for trainings who had heard about the party. I knew it wasn’t really for me, but I loved that my party was becoming a big event.
“Hello, who is that?” a woman behind me said, and I looked up to see a scruffy guy with a battered leather hat walk in. It was Daniel, the volunteer from Kantuta who had warned me to stay away. With yellow hair, blue eyes, and dimples, he looked every inch the Southern California surfer dude that he was. I assumed he had no idea who I was, and hoped I wouldn’t have to speak to him.
“This must be the birthday girl,” he said and wrapped me in a hug. He knew who I was and that I was moving to Kantuta. He had heard about me puking out the back of the sugar cane truck, thanks to Nina. I smiled and tried to think of a witty response, but he disappeared back into the crowd. Laura and I laughed as he stepped away and I was handed a shot glass full of Bolivia’s finest singani.
At some point I had had too many drinks and knew I needed to leave the building. I didn’t want to cry on Laura’s shoulder and tell her how much I was going to miss her. Saying no was difficult for me, but I knew I had passed my limit, so I sneaked out the door. I did this anytime I was too drunk to pretend that I was having a good time. Sometimes I needed to be alone. I peeked behind me and was both relieved and heartbroken that no one was coming to save me.
Stumbling out into the street, I bumped into a woman who was heading to Urkupiña. It was nearly midnight, but the wide main boulevard was now full of people. Dogs hiding behind fences barked. Many of the people were carrying toy cars, fake money, and tiny houses. Earlier that night, a taxicab driver told us they were replicas of what the people wanted. When festivalgoers arrived at the hill where the image of la Virgen had appeared, a yatiri would bless the replicas, and the people would leave them in hopes of having their specific request filled. The mixture of Indigenous ceremony and Christian icons made me think of the prayer said before powwows I’d attended, thanking Jesus, the Creator, and all our ancestors. I wished I had something a yatiri could bless. What could I place on the hill that would help me be the opposite of the smug volunteers in the movie? The three months of training that was about to end had improved my Spanish, taught me a little bit of Quechua, and burned into my mind the shape of Bolivia on a map. But I had no clue as to whether I could help Bolivians. No trinket represented the knowledge I thought I lacked or the experience I hoped to have in Kantuta.
6
El Centro Infantil — The Children’s Center
Finally, I was back in Kantuta for good. For $25 a month, I rented a room with a line of windows looking down onto the street. I was a goldfish in an aquarium. The wood floors creaked when I crossed the room, and my new mattress fit perfectly into the bulky green mosquito net. The week before coming to Kantuta, Jodi and I ran through the market in Cochabamba to buy the household appliances we thought we would need. We bought the same multispeed blender, and she found a large pressure cooker, one of the must-have items according to current volunteers. Instead, I picked out a compact white Brazilian typewriter with my remaining money, anticipating the satisfaction that would come from loudly pounding out my thoughts on my Bolivian experience. I didn’t have a table yet, but like everything else I wanted, I was certain it would eventually come. My apartment was a few houses down the street from the Children’s Center, and I could hear the dinner bell every night.
On my first day, I arrived at the front gates to find that the kids were already there, ripping off hunks of bread, running to class at the school across the street. They were a blur of white school smocks, skinny legs, and dusty sandal-shod feet. I took a deep breath and knocked on Director Simon’s office.
“Ah, señorita, welcome,” he greeted me. Simon was from Oruro, in the northern part of the country, and I couldn’t always understand what he said because he threw in the occasional Aymara word. He walked me to the cafeteria, and we passed a group of boys pulling wet combs through their short hair, getting ready for their classes. A teenage girl stood on the patio next to a plastic basin of water and used her fingers to create a long, smooth ponytail in a younger girl’s hair. A boy who looked to be about ten years old bu
ttoned up the front of his smock.
Simon introduced me to two brothers, Tomas and Umberto, who had recently come to the Center together. Seven-year-old Umberto looked at me without a smile. Tomas, five, flashed a gap-toothed grin. Tomas’s pants were too big, and Umberto’s shirt was faded, probably from too many washings. I wanted to get down on my knees and hug them both. Instead, I shook their little hands and bit my lip to hide my smile. Umberto pulled Tomas to the cafeteria for breakfast. The director explained that the boys didn’t have any nearby relatives and rarely saw their grandmother, who lived in a distant state. Tomas was a few months past his fifth birthday and officially too young to be admitted to the Center, but because everyone wanted to keep the brothers together, they were both let in.
I arrived in Kantuta thinking that every child at the Center had a heartbreaking story of poverty and abandonment. Vulnerable children always scared me because I had once been a vulnerable child and knew they weren’t safe in this world. I did not want to be at an orphanage. But by the end of that first week, I realized that these were just kids, some poorer than others and many lucky to be there. Many of the children were from families in Kantuta who weren’t destitute but wanted their children to benefit from the meals and supplies they received. Then there were the children whose families lived and worked far out in the rural communities surrounding Kantuta. In the tiny villages where they came from, there were no schools, or the rural schools only went up to fifth grade.
Sunday was market day, when buyers and sellers from the neighboring communities came into Kantuta for weekly supplies. Everyone congregated in the open market building where the cement floor and metal roof protected the sellers and their products from the weather. During one of my first trips to the market, I ran into Joaquin, a quiet boy with a big smile, who was shopping with his mother, a tall cholita with a loose ponytail and apple cheeks who reminded me of my auntie. She pointed to a pile of tomatoes that were plumper than the tomatoes I almost bought. I smiled and nodded in gratitude. She had come to town to shop and visit with him. As Joaquin and his mother walked away, I saw two chubby cheeks peeking over the back of the colorful aguayo cloth tied around her shoulders. She was carrying a baby in there. Joaquin turned and gently patted the baby’s head. Before that moment, I had only seen him as a shy kid from the Center, not as someone’s child or someone’s big brother. This mother was sacrificing time with her child, years of their lives spent apart, so that he could get an education and have opportunities she never did. My twenty-six months without a refrigerator seemed ridiculously easy by comparison.