Paros y Bloqueos. Strikes and Blockades.

What you’ve missed, and what I’ve lived:

(Dates on timeline are approximate. Time is often irrelevant here and I therefore lose track quite easily.)

Aug 3, 2008- Highly controversial Bolivian president Evo Morales goes up for re-election in a few days. Peace Corps is worried about potential for civil unrest, strikes, blockades, and violence, and decides to round up all volunteers and put them in a super secret, super remote five-star resort (really a five-star trailer park if you look closely) and prohibits volunteers from publicly disclosing whereabouts. This is known as consolidation, one step away from evacuation.

Aug 8, 2008- I am at a resort with TV in my cabin. Talk about luxury. Olympics start, I catch a few minutes of the opening ceremony then wait up several nights in a row til four in the morning hoping to catch some sort of coverage but to no avail.

Aug 8, 2008- Elections are to begin in two days. Forty-eight hours before elections and twenty-four hours after, the sale and consumption of alcohol is prohibited in the entire country. This ensures that Bolivians are in a clear state of mind as they cast their votes and that Peace Corps has the most unbelievably tame gathering of 135 volunteers imaginable.

Aug 11, 2008- It is announced that Evo is to continue as president, winning 60% of the vote. People get angry.

Aug 12, 2008- Peace Corps releases volunteers from confinement and I am on my way to Trinidad, Bolivia, to meet my brother who has ridden a motorcycle from the U.S. to visit me.

Aug 13, 2008- People are still angry.

Aug 14, 2008- I cruise down the Amazon rivers with four volunteers on a sweet little boat that takes us away from civilization. I swim with river dolphins, look for monkeys and crocodiles, fish for piranhas, and eat turtle eggs as I wait for my brother to show up. Just as I give up hope, when the sky is dark and the search for a cell phone signal comes up empty, the sound of a motor puttering though the darkness emerges. I get so excited I howl at the full moon, run full speed towards the river without seeing the two horizontal wires attached to posts as a makeshift fence, and successfully knock all the air out of my lungs as I fall backwards. My brother makes it in one piece (the same cannot be said about his motorcycle) and he is greeted by a well choreographed Macarena dance, Peace Corps style.

Aug 17, 2008- I finish my cruise and and re-enter the city only to find that people are not done being angry.

Aug 18, 2008- Strikes. Blockades. No transportation. I get stuck in Trinidad indefinitely. The whole town shuts down. Only thing to eat are the snow cones a girl is selling on the street. I eat two.

Aug 19, 2008- People. Angry. I am stuck. Dirty hostels. Tammy. A little angry.

Aug 20, 2008- Reruns of female gymnastics beam final. I watch it four times. Tammy, now not so angry.

Aug 21, 2008- I eat friend alligator at a delicious Mexican restaurant where my friends and I have eaten every night we have been in the city. We finally get to take an overnight bus back to Santa Cruz.

Aug 22, 2008- I belatedly remember my one year anniversary in country. Those who are in the city go out with me and celebrate in style.

Aug 23, 2008- I finally get back to site. My brother gets to spend three hours with me in Samaipata, enough time to go to the bathroom, eat lunch, go to the bathroom, and get back in the taxi.

Aug 24-28, 2008- I spend five days in site setting up meetings for my various projects. Find out the mayor has changed, and so has my counterpart in the mayor’s office. I am now on my third one in a year.

Aug 25, 2008- I go work with bees in a neighboring community. Raising bees and selling their wax, honey, pollen, and propoleum can make for a very successful micro-business and a nice bump in income.

Timmy, my beloved landlord’s dog, follows me to the highway and is hit by a truck and dies.

Aug 28, 2008- I head out for rodeo, one of the biggest and most traditional events in Bolivia volunteer life. However, the angry Bolivians do not rest. I get as far as Santa Cruz, two and a half hours away. Blockades close the roads and prevents travel, putting to waste the weeks of careful planning that has taken place to get the highly coveted Argentine steak into the mouths of beef-deprived volunteers.

Sept 2, 2008- I get an adorable new Boxer-Staffordshire bull terrier mix puppy whose name Liula (pronounced Lula) was inspired by my best friend Jing Liu.

Sept 3, 2008- I learn that to be a successful Peace Corps volunteer in my site, I really should have studied interior design rather than business. I am put in charge of decorating a newly built hostel in Bella Vista and the redecorating of the shop from my women’s group. Not to worry though. What I lack in artistic creativity, I make up in resourcefulness. So I go about doing what I do best: I network, and I outsource. Done and done.

Today- Nothing new. Blockades and strikes still continuing as we speak.

And there you have it. Living life one day at a time and hoping that protests don’t get in the way of plans, although they always do. Just livin’ the dream.