meish dot org: life, unfolding

I lived in Bolivia for just over a year between 1995 and 1996, performing
independent anthropological fieldwork on ritual and identity in the Andes,
as part of my studies back home in the UK.

There is a (rather Freudian) theory within Anthropology in which ‘the field’ (where the anthropologist
performs research) is seen as female, and the anthropologist as male -
the field is therefore ‘penetrated’ by the quizzical explorations of the
anthropologist.

I tend to share the more recent view that such ‘penetration’ is mutual -
the anthropologist is affected as much by his or her experiences
in the field as he or she affects the field itself.

To say that I was affected by my experiences in Bolivia would
be the understatement of the century. A lot happened.
In anthropology these days, ethnography is no longer seen as being a cold, clinical, objective
record of a group of people, but rather as a record of the encounter
between the anthropologist and the culture concerned.

As part of the research, I had to write up my results
in a scientific way - the dissertation. But I didn’t feel that this exercise gave
sufficient expression to the experience I had had. Over a year after my
return from South America, I began to write. The words that in this section are just the beginning of my account of a year that changed
everything.

A Hand, Outstretched
Once outside, through laboured breathing I tried to prevent the porter from loading my backpack into the boot of a waiting taxi, which he was in the process of doing. I had read my guidebooks, and self-righteously had a number of notions about not being just another gullible tourist, of never getting into a Latin American taxi without first negotiating or haggling the price.

But my protestations were lost in the wet Altiplano wind, and by the time I had caught the porter’s full attention, it was for a different reason. The driver had shut the boot, and the porter was standing, palm outstretched, in front of me. I gave him the crumpled dollar I had kept in my pocket for this time, knowing it was inevitable.

He nodded briefly, his eyes already drifting to the doorway in search of emerging passengers. Following them, he scurried off to find another load.

The customer is generally wrong
I was all too aware that my backpack was already loaded into the waiting vehicle, but I was not. I had a fleeting vision of the screech of tyres as the battered taxi pulled away from the kerb, and I was left waving goodbye to my socks.

Ducking my head, I clambered into the back seat to the cab, and asked the driver with as much authority and fluency as I could manage ‘How much to Calle Abdon Saavedra?’. I had no idea where the street was, but had been told by a family friend, normally resident in La Paz, but currently on holiday in England, that there was a private hostel there where I could stay while I found somewhere to live. The driver grunted a price without turning around.

I translated in my head. Thirty Bolivianos. That was over four pounds. Was that good or bad? Was I being ripped off? Or had my naive little ruse actually worked? Of course, I had no idea how much the journey should cost, so assumed I was being quoted an inflated price. Unused to haggling, I had no idea how to bring the price down, so asked in a questioning voice ‘Veinte-y-cinco?’ Twenty Five. He shook his head, and repeated his price. And I got the firm impression that that was that.

I felt cheated before I had even had a chance to haggle properly, and slumped back resentfully in my seat, vowing not to tip. He turned around in his seat, taking his eyes off the road, and indicated the sign screwed to the back of the passenger seat. It had a table of prices, and he pointed to the line which read in Spanish: ‘Airport to La Paz city centre, one passenger with luggage = 30 Bolivianos’. He rolled his eyes, and faced the road again.

I felt unobservant and mistrusting, and most of all, stupid.

Winding down
My head ached, and my throat was dry from the dehydrating effects of flying, and too much cold, thin air.

We sped along a busy dual carriageway, lined with thick bushes and rocky outcrops. But I could feel that we were descending slowly - after two solid days on aeroplanes, my inner ear was sensitive to the tilt of movement. I realised that we were making our way down into the canyon in which La Paz lies by the gentlest route possible - and as we wound down the side, I became more and more wound up - apprehensive and full of childish excitement, like going to visit grandparents, or birthday mornings.

I strained for the slightest glimpse of the approaching city through the foliage beside the road, and caught teasing momentary tableaux framed by the dusty branches - red roofs, steep canyon walls, houses clinging like ivy.

String
Rain spattered the windscreen, and I struggled to keep my eyes open. It had been a long journey, and I was looking forward to some rest.

I cursed at the irony of wanting to sleep only when things began to get interesting - and yet having stayed awake for entire flights, when the food was bland, the company rotten, the film puerile at best, offensive to intelligent life at worst. Which would have been the better time to rest, I silently chided myself.

But rounding the next smooth curve of the downward road, I caught my breath - for there was La Paz, stretched out across a wide deep canyon, packed with buildings, ranging from shining glass offices and hotels in the centre of the valley to corrugated iron shacks perched precariously on the lip and steep walls. Houses across the valley were built on roads so steep I was sure no vehicle could manage them, and yet still more were being built.

Men walked along the side of this busy road, with bundles of bricks, of pebbles, of packages unidentifiable, swathed in bright cloth carried on their backs, held there by string, or rags, which seemed to cut painfully into shoulders, chests, foreheads, bleeding fingers. Each man I saw looked dusty, despite the rain.

Eyes wide
By the time we had descended to the bottom of the canyon, my eyes were wide, trying to take in as much as I could, as I whirled in my seat. So much for my earlier show of cool disinterest and authority.

I saw market stalls full of produce, dusty papaya skins speckled by rain. There were advertising hoardings for products I had never heard of, but with strangely familiar advertising - ‘Omo - Limpia y Brilla Toda Ropa!‘ ‘Cruzcampo - Simplemente, Mejor‘ - the oversized ejeculatory lettering accompanied by outdated fading photographs of happy families, smiling children.

I guessed the people featured weren’t Bolivian - their flawless features seemed strangely misplaced next to those of the people who went about their lives beneath their glassy eyes. Their skin was lighter, their teeth more even, the children looked carefree and well-fed. Even the family dog looked cared for.

And yet as we waited for a red traffic light to change, at the foot of the hoarding, a bundle of rags proffered a withered hand and chanted a familiar begging litany, which needed no translation - the sound more important than the words themselves.

Cover story
The contrast was stark, and I was shocked: not because of poverty - I had seen that before, in other countries, as well as my own, and besides, it was only to be expected in this, the poorest country in South America - but by the contrasts coming so readily, so effortlessly.

I had expected that, like any good journalist, anthropologist, I would have to force the symbolism, by placing one against the other, making the rare and unexpected juxtaposition symbolic in itself. This is a common habit of anthropology, anthropologists - in order to drive the point home harder, force the symbolism, carry the situations to their extremes, until the audience has no choice but to acquiesce, agreeing finally that, yes, they see the symbolism, and yes, the situation is clear.

And I was as guilty as the rest. I had arrived in Bolivia with baggage, whisked off by a porter through customs, but also with intellectual first world baggage. I had arrived ready to drop in ‘New Internationalist’ and ‘National Geographic’ magazine banner titles to every scene, ready to impose my structure of meaning onto each symbolism and act. But I was shocked, because there, without my even trying, the point had been made.

And everywhere I looked, the points were made again and again and again: A huge red mural across the side of a building extolled ‘Siempre Coca-Cola’, while black scrawled grafitti covered the exlamation mark, proclaiming ‘Yanqui go hom!’. Yet the umbrellas in front of every roadside cafe carried the same familiar red and white logo.

Opening the box
Like many travellers before me, I was surprised to discover that symbolic contrasts were being made without my help, and more than that, that ‘anthropology’ was happening outside the academic discipline, without analysis and without my knowledge.

Everywhere I looked, people lived out their lives, in their own context. And I was the foreigner, the reason for stares and comments. For weeks afterwards, this fact returned to me, in each encounter, each act, each face.

I was reminded that I was different, that it was I who disrupted normality, with my probing questions and constantly scribbling hand.

Bag ladies
Leaving the main street, known as the Prado and the only horizontal street in the town, we climbed a steep road to the right. The engine whined and the driver changed gears.

The rain was still spitting down, though not heavy enough to make people stop their activities. As we slowed further still, to climb the hill, I noticed women walking on the thin pavements either side of the street. They looked so familiar - the faces from a thousand travel guides and postcards - with their hair in two long black neat braids, falling down their backs. They wore colourful skirts, aprons and shawls, and on their backs, in slings of cloth, they carried shopping, babies, produce.

But on their heads, they wore upturned plastic bags, emblazoned with the names of a supermarket, an airline. They wore these bags, neatly tucked, and with the point of one corner sticking upwards, to protect their bowler hats from the rain, which could, I guessed, damage the felt.

Colours were everywhere - bright, artificial neons and acid-bright hues in signs, clothes, blankets, decorations…and yet, each of these unnatural shades was placed against an all-encompassing background of earthy browns, rusty reds, dusty yellows and the pure blue-grey of the clearing thin sky.

Breathless
Soon we were pulling up in front of a high brick wall, which ran the length of a cobbled street. At irregular intervals, metal doors and gates gave access to whatever was behind the wall.

I climbed out of the cab, feeling disoriented, and paid the driver after he had removed my backpack from the boot. He drove off without saying goodbye, and I was left with my belongings at the side of a deserted road near the cliffs of La Paz canyon.

The sky cleared, revealing a wide view of the city beneath me. I stood and looked out over the dusty rooftops, breathless.

Breathless

I opened my eyes to a mosaic of faces hovering above me. An airport
official helped me to my feet, shooing away the gawkers.

My mind felt
a little clearer although my legs were still shaking, and my head
throbbed. I leaned heavily on the inspection desk, as the official
went through my papers, in painstaking detail. The phrases I had so
carefully rehearsed on the journey had completely disappeared from
my muddled brain, and I struggled to string together coherent sentences
in Spanish.

Learning to shine

When I had arrived in Spain, over nine months earlier, my Spanish had been
basic, to say the least. Prior to that, I had survived through one
and a half years of language and grammar classes at the university
before that, and had been proud, (and slightly amazed) to have been
placed at the top of my class in the mid-year exams. I had not studied
particularly hard, and my grasp of Spanish, I maintained, was based
on ninety percent acting, seven percent panache, and three percent
actual knowledge.

I had originally chosen to study Spanish at university
for a number of reasons - not least because I had been pronounced
a resounding failure in the language at eighteen, after two years
of (lack of) study. I remember my Spanish teacher at college looking
at me and shaking his head as he told me ‘You have the potential to
shine, but when will you realise it?’. And so I had muddled my way
through Spanish classes in Liverpool, determined to prove him and
all the others who had doubted - and myself - wrong. My knowledge
of the language was textbook, and based on speaking with others in
a small class of those with a similar ability.

Thus it came as no
small surprise that, on arriving in Seville one chilly Monday in January,
I went hungry for hours before I could get up the nerve to order food
in a shop. After that first hungry day, my language had improved in
leaps and bounds - I knew no-one who spoke English, and was therefore
forced to communicate, and understand, in order to survive.

I learnt
that it was better to say something quickly but wrongly, than to hesitate
until I was sure of the grammatic correctness, the appropriate tense
and pronoun and vocabulary, by which point the conversation would
surely have moved on and I would be left, speechless.

Churros y chocolate

I stayed in Spain for seven months, ostensibly studying at the University
there, which was frustratingly - but fortunately - on strike for much of that time.

So I had busied myself with flamenco lessons, and living as a semi-Spaniard,
rising late and making full use of the siesta, playing cards in
the park in the shade of leafy trees, and wandering through the
Moorish maze in the Alcazar palace. I went out with friends at midnight,
and drank and danced until dawn, when we staggered homeward through
the waking narrow streets, garlanded with geraniums on balconies,
snacking as we went on the traditional drinker’s breakfast of Churros
y Chocolate - hot sticky batter wands dunked in a cup of steaming
bitter-sweet dark chocolate.

I learnt to think in Spanish before
English, and to make jokes and word-plays. I began to dream in the
language which is, they say, the first sign that you are becoming
fluent, and I barely noticed.
I developed an Andalu’ accent, and enjoyed
heated discussions and afternoons with Spanish friends at an outdoor
cafe by the banks of the Guadalquivir, sipping lemon tea in the
shade of a wide umbrella.

Goodbye socks

But the heat
of those long easy Andalucian afternoons was distant from the chilled air of
the Altiplano, as I collected my papers from the immigration official,
and shuffled over to a row of anonymous seats, to await the arrival
of the baggage from the plane.

Unlike other airports I had passed
through on my journey, the baggage reclaim hall in La Paz International
Airport was tiny and cramped, and the baggage was thrown through
a hole from outside onto a narrow conveyor belt, which ran the length
of the hall before dumping the baggage unceremoniously on the lino
at the far end. The message and procedure was clear. You had to
collect your baggage before it hit the dirty floor.

But as the conveyor cranked into motion, the action of retrieving bags
from the belt was made more difficult by the sudden appearance of
a small army of men in brilliant blue boiler suits. I had seen them
lurking beyond the glass doors of the baggage hall, and had assumed
they were technicians, or cleaners of some kind. But no, they were
porters, and they clanked in rusty trolleys, and heaved suitcases,
backpacks off the belt as they appeared, flung through the portal,
balancing them on their carts. The owner of each piece of luggage
then had to locate its whereabouts, and by doing so, agreed to have
the luggage transported by that porter through customs and out into
the arrival hall.

One by one, the bags were reunited with their owners. Porters led their customers towards customs and away from the baggage hall.
I grimaced with panic, I hadn’t seen my brightly
coloured backpack come through the hole in the wall, and for one
brief horrible moment, I feared it had been ‘liberated’ en route.
I had not seen it since Manchester, and there had been plenty of
miles and stops and starts since then.

Service industry

I looked around the emptying hall,
verging on tears; the product of exhaustion, and nausea, and confusion,
and a sudden fear of being in a very, very foreign country without
even my few possessions.

Relief washed over me and I grinned, noticing that with impressive speed, my backpack
had made its way onto a porter’s trolley
at the other end of the hall. I had to applaud his cunning. To ask
him to remove the pack would be pointless, since by that point,
he had already done the hard work of lifting it onto the trolley,
and would expect to be tipped.

I sighed in resignation and amusement,
and approached him, signalling that his burden belonged to me. Perhaps
I imagined it, but I could have sworn that his eyes dulled when
he saw that I was just another shabby tired traveller, and not the
rich American he may have imagined owned my neon backpack.

Without
hesitating, he set off at a brisk pace towards the customs desk.
I followed in his wake, more slowly, unwilling to expose myself
to any more nausea and shortness of breath than that which I was
already experiencing.

Tilting the wheel

The customs desk, when I reached it, was just that: a long formica-topped desk,
looking curiously out of place, as if it had been transported from
a city office. Behind it, a stern-faced man was seated, and as I
approached, he indicated that I should press the button mounted
on the surface of the table. Beside it, a pair of bare light bulbs
were hooked up to a rudimentary circuit, and coloured with marker
pens - one green, the other red.

I pushed the button slowly, and
the green bulb lit up. He waved me through without a second glance,
already beckoning the next passenger to try his luck. I was reminded
of corrupt croupiers in casinos, manipulating the roulette wheel
with subtle pressure on a button on the floor with their foot, or
on the edge of the table with their belly.

My porter had already
skipped on ahead, and I hurried after him down the long passage out of customs and into the world.
The passage was created by scaffolding and clear sheets of tarpaulin,
barely masking building work and decorating going on behind. I had
the strange sensation that perhaps I had disembarked at the wrong
stop, as one can do when travelling by train or bus, for this narrow
dusty passageway did not match my visions of the International Airport
at La Paz promised so tantalisingly on my ticket.

Emerging into
the arrivals hall, I realised that the entire arrivals terminal
was little more than a breeze-block shed, and the Altiplano wind
whipped chillingly through the open doors.

Fear of Flying

After three hours on the ground in Arequipa, the captain made the decision
to push on to La Paz. We hurried back onto the aeroplane, out of the
cold, and the bitter wind, once more setting our minds to the modern
miracle of air travel.

However many times I fly, I will always have
a nugget of deep mistrust about the whole operation in my mind, usually
somewhere near the front, but which can generally be worked to the
back, depending on the quality of the company, the in-flight movie,
the thickness of my book. I am unwilling to be completely convinced
by something which seems so eminently illogical. But like the bee,
we stay in the air - most of the time - so I hold my tongue, and
still my mind.

We taxied down the runway in Arequipa, past the burnt-out
hulls of aircraft, pushed to the side of the airfield, their cabin
mouths gaping open, as if in surprise. As we waited for clearance for take-off,
I watched a mother and three small children cross the field from left
to right, pushing a cart piled high with empty soda bottles. We turned
onto the main runway, and began to gather speed, watched with disinterest
from behind a low wall at the side of the field by a group of nut-brown
women in colourful skirts who are spreading their laundry to dry on
bush-tops at the periphery of the airfield.

As the engines began to
scream and the wheels bumped the last few feet along the ground, we
pulled upwards, and headed for the sky. I watched the receding dusty
earth below, and caught a brief glimpse of a solitary black dog taking
a shit beside the runway, watching us, puzzled but calm, as we receded
into the clouded sky.

Dropping off

By this point, I was finding it more than a little difficult to keep
my eyes open. I found myself tumbling in and out of that unique kind
of unexpected doze which you only experience on forms of public transport
- the kind where you feel yourself keeling forwards a millimetre at
a time, as your chin drops to your chest, having only closed your
eyes to blink, lulled into a sleepy state by the rhythm and idea of
motion. And then, mere seconds later, you awake with a guilty start,
unsure of whether moments, minutes or hours have passed, and determined
to keep awake. You strain to keep your eyes open, as they roll in
your sockets, as if you are drunk or insane, unable to focus or gaze.

I remained in this state for an hour or more, unwilling to miss any
of the glimpses of the Andes which were revealed by occasional breaks
in the thick cloud. I woke up considerably when I realised that the
shining expanse of blue over which we were passing was not any sea,
as I had unconsciously assumed, but was in fact Lake Titicaca.

Lake
Titicaca. The very name has a kind of magical quality about it. It
is from the realm of geography lessons and Trivial Pursuits. And there
I was, flying above it, marvelling at the expanse of shining blue
water, dotted with delicate islands, calm as a mirror. I turned to
find a fellow passenger watching my excitement with interest. The businessman
from the conversation on the airfield had somehow installed himself
in a neighbouring seat, and now looked on my thrilled expression with
some amusement.

To mask my excitement, I pointed out of the
window and asked ‘El Lago Titicaca?‘. He leant over me to peer out of the tiny window, smelling of of old alcohol, musty clothing and travel. He nodded, adding ‘Cuando
hizon la frontera, nosotros peruanos ganamos el Titi - los bolivianos
ganaron el Caca - When they made the border [through the lake]
we Peruvians got the Titi - the Bolivians got the Caca’. The fat businessman
chuckled, and his chin wobbled. I turned back to the window.

Landing lights

Fifteen minutes later, we were circling over La Paz. I saw the city spread
out before me, like a minutely stitched blanket, only realising as
we came in to land that what I had seen was only the outskirts and
shanty-towns of the neighbouring city El Alto. La Paz itself
lay in the canyon, according to the guidebooks. The airport was on
the Altiplano, half an hour from the town.

The plane gradually decreased
altitude, and the engines began to whine in the thin air. We passed
through pockets of turbulence which seemed to grab at the plane in
descent, juddering the whole body. Holding onto the armrests, and
the meagre contents of my stomach (a desolate in-flight breakfast
of coffee and peanuts) the businessman told me that landing in La
Paz was extremely dangerous, which is why only certain aeroplanes
could do it. Because of the thin air, he explained, tyres could burst,
and special fuel was needed, or else there could be an explosion with
the merest spark.

It was with this thought in mind that we
hurtled towards the ground at great speed.

Kissing the tarmac

We landed, safely, and taxied a short distance before coming to a complete
halt. The cabin doors were opened and I collected my hand luggage. My heart began to beat faster - I could not tell if this was from
the altitude or from sheer anticipation. I jostled with the other
passengers to make my way along the narrow aisle and out of the aircraft.

As we left the plane, the steward wished each person a happy stay, and reminded
us to visit Peru again. My mind was elsewhere.
My thoughts were with
the low grey buildings, set against a low grey sky, at the perimeter of the airfield.
The airport looked like a construction site from our position about
half a mile away.

The air was crisp and, descending the stairs, I
fancied that I could taste the lack of oxygen. But, much to my disappointment, I did not
feel radically different. I had expected
that stepping off the plane and onto Bolivian soil would feel like
Amundsen reaching the Antarctic, Tensing’s first foot on top of Everest.
But instead, I felt tired and grubby and homeless. At
the bottom of the stairs, I stepped onto the tarmac, which felt cold
and hard, like the tarmac had done in Manchester at the beginning
of the journey. Rain started to spit down, as it had done then (was
it only two days ago?), but this time, a short man in a uniform, with
an ancient face, hurried over with an umbrella, and signalled that
I should follow him to the terminal.

He set off at a half run, holding
the umbrella at exactly the right angle to get my hair caught in the
mechanism and poke me in the eye with the spokes at the same time.
As I scampered next to him across the rain-spotted tarmac, I realised
that each passenger on the flight had been greeted similarly, and
that our route from aircraft to terminal was lined with armed guards, legs encased in gestapo-style
jack-boots, dirty hands gripped firmly around sub-machine guns. I
could not seen their faces.

Falling is easy

We ran for a few hundred metres - the stocky porter tangling his umbrella in my hair
and I, allowing my small but heavy backpack to bounce around in my arms as I kept pace.

By the time we arrived at the terminal, I was out of breath. My heart
was racing, and I was gasping for air. My vision pounded and I couldn’t catch the top of my breath.
I felt confused and slow and
unco-ordinated, fumbling for passport and documentation in the pocket of my jacket.

Shuffling forward in the queue to have our documents expected, I tried
to think of all the phrases, so recently and well thought up and practiced,
to explain my research status. I had letters of sponsorship and introduction
from officials in three countries, and had rehearsed a little speech
with which to present them.

And yet as I searched my hazy memory,
I felt my brain cloud over, as if I had stood up too quickly. The
pounding in my chest was now so hard that I thought I was having a
heart attack. I felt nauseous and unfocused as I approached the official
beind the tall desk, handing him my papers. He asked to see my ticket,
and I crouched down to reach into the top compartment of my knapsack
to retrieve it.

Standing up, with papers in hand, I felt my brain turn black, and my
legs crumple beneath me. My eyes clouded over, and I hit the cool
tiled floor in slow motion, banging my head softly. I remember seeing the sign attached to the ceiling in three languages, all saying “Welcome to Bolivia.”

Then there was nothing.

Rising Above it All

The flight to La Paz was delayed because
of bad weather in Cuzco. We waited in Arequipa for conditions to clear,
stretching our legs on the airfield. I breathed my first Andean air,
and felt dizzy, partly through lack of sleep, partly through lack
of oxygen, and mostly through the sheer enormity of the situation.

I leaned against a fuel truck to steady my legs, my thoughts. These
were the Andes - my prize and my goal. A broad sweep of ridges across
a map, the setting for a thousand daydreams - for years I had held
the idea in my mind, savouring it like the last caramel in the tin,
turning over the name and myriad possibilites it held. I had dreamed
so often of standing a mile above the sea, shivering in the dry wind,
breathing thin Andean air and looking out over snowcapped mountains
and dusty plains that actually being there, doing all that, was a
little overwhelming. I shivered again. It was very cold.

We had left
the oppressive flat humidity of Lima at dawn, rising through the low
cloud that seemed to hang permanently over the city, as if entering
a second sky. As we headed east, moving from the coastal lowlands
towards the Andes, crumpled brown mountains, like discarded wrapping
paper, appeared, their peaks breaking through the low cloud. From
my smudged and freezing window, miles above, they looked like stranded
islands, the wild sea of clouds breaking over their shores with the
dawn.

I was exhausted from the long series of flights to get to this
new world, and from too many hours spent killing time in sterile airport
lounges. London, Madrid, Santo Domingo, Lima - my eyes ached with
purified air and lack of sleep, and names and flights and times blurred
together in my mind. I have always wondered why airport lounges are
so dull, being as they are associated with journeys, arrivals and
departures. The seating always the same - long rows of semi-comfortable
seats; the duty-free shopping identical, and always the only thing
open. Rum from Barbados, Gin from London, Perfume from Paris. And
where are we this morning? Tuesday? Must be Peru.

A matter of scale

My mind swum with the enormity of this
step - physically, a movement between a building and a machine; mentally,
a giant’s leap to a whole new world. I had always been amazed that
leaving a country was that easy - one step, and you’re gone. Yet we
are so busy fumbling with boarding cards and bonkbusters that there’s
barely time to register such a passage.

On each flight I had strained
forward in my seat to peer out of the tiny scratched window, eager
to catch a glimpse of dusty mountains, winding roads like veins, shimmering
lakes, moss-like forest shining sea, lying far below. On each succesive
landing, as the plane neared the runway and the miniature became life-size,
I had searched for a human in the landscape, the network of streets
and shacks beneath the flight-path. It was only then that I could
begin to take it on board. I am in Spain; The Dominican Republic;
Peru. That person is a local - he’s raking his yard, as he always
does on a Wednesday afternoon - life is normal, undisturbed, but for
the noisy crashing of the aircraft thundering overhead. I am the one
who is out of place, out of normality.

Ever since I had first been
tall enough to see out of the tiny boxed window on an aeroplane, I
had been fascinated with seeing the world in minature. I loved the
way that borders meant nothing up there - that the movement from one
country, state, province to the next was infintissimal; that from
that height the relations between mountains and cities, rivers and
the ocean could be seen clearly.

And as we landed, I could count off
- There’s my first Peruvian; now I can see the face of another; and
then the eyes of still another. I counted - still count - the nations
by the faces, and the surface of the world as one, from my metal cocoon.
As we had come in to land on Arequipa airfield, the mountains which
had previously seemed so small and delicate had towered above us,
majestic and desolate.

Nowhere land

When we came to a halt, we disembarked, wandering and stretching close
to the plane, as if scared that it might leave without us. Arequipa
is a bit of a nowhere place, really. It is not the usual stop en route
from Lima to La Paz, but actually lies in the mountains to the South.
It is over three thousand metres above sea level, and is famous for
its isolation - and its weather.

In Lima I had stopped for a meal
with a distant friend of a friend. I knew no-one else in South America,
save the handful of fellow students from the University of Liverpool
who, like me were spending a year doing independent research in the
region, in locations from Northern Mexico to Southern Chile. I knew
that one of them, Neil, had planned to go to Arequipa, and had told
me so back in January, the last time I had seen him before I left Liverpool
to live and study in Southern Spain for seven months. But this was
August. Plans change as much as people, and who knows where he was
by then. I stared down the bleak valley wedged betwen the mountains,
where the guidebook had indicated that the city lay, and silently
wished him well, if he was there.

Living in colour

While waiting for the weather to
clear for our ongoing journey, I read more of the guidebook before
I was drawn into a conversation with two other strandees. One was
a flight attendant on the AeroPeru flight, taking the opportunity
presented by the unexpected stopover to have a cigarette (or ten).
The other was a plump businessman from Lima, heading to the Bolivian
capital for a meeting, hence the dawn flight. Their faces looked much
like those I had grown accustomed to during my time in Spain - olive
skin with dark hair and eyes. But I realised that these men, with
their relative whitness, were a minority, at least in the country
to which we were heading, Bolivia. Already, scanning the rows of seats
on the aeroplane I had noticed the brown faces and features which
belied indian ancestry. Both Boliva and Peru have sizeable indigenous
populations, and even larger groups of ‘mestizos’ - a term which literally
means ‘mixed’, but which carries many more, less favourable connotations.

One of the men with whom I had been talking, the flight steward, asked
me if I had plans to visit Arequipa ‘properly’ during my time in South
America. His accent was strange to my ears, used as I was to the rapidity
and mis-pronunciation of the Spanish spoken in Andalucia. His voice
meandered slowly and with precision. I told him, with typical Andaluz
directness, that it was okay, that I spoke Spanish well,
that he could speak faster. He grinned lopsidedly and lilted ‘Pero
hablamos asi….. But we speak like this’. I blushed and realised
that with such scarcity of oxygen, there was danger in rushing anything.
I tried to slow my speech, knowing that if I did not, I would soon
be breathless.

The steward chuckled, and his cigarette butt flew through
the air as he flicked it. I watched the glowing arc it made, and saw
it come to land next to the fuel truck. So this is South America,
I thought, and turned my back.

I remember the exact moment when the world cracked.

We’d been drinking over at a friend’s house in Cochabamba for a whole long, hot afternoon. Rum and orange juice on a rooftop, with the gentle hum of the market four stories below, an unrelenting sun, little shade and the ice melting quickly in our glasses. After a few hours, our heads started to throb with sun and rum, and we decided to seek shelter in the only air-conditioned place in town: the cinema.

Walking through the town centre towards the cinema, the sun was hot on my head, and the paving slabs scrolled under my feet like a conveyor. I wasn’t conscious of trying to walk, focusing instead on the cool bottle of water that lay ahead temptingly in the cool dark of the cinema. I have no idea how long it took to get there. A couple of minutes, half an hour, I have no idea. I know that when we arrived, we joined a lengthy queue, paid a few Bolivianos to sit in La Butaca, bought clear plastic bags of freshly-made-and-salted crisps from the woman in the foyer, and bottles of icy water and neon boxes of Nerds from the man who sat on the stairs, and headed into the darkened cocoon to relax in the cool air and comfy seats.

It must have been a Saturday, because the cinema was packed with kids, fidgeting in their seats and chatting animatedly to their friends. We were by far the tallest, oldest, whitest, most conspicuous people in the room, and we slumped down in our seats and tried to shut out the noise, sipping on cool water, massaging aching temples.

The film began. The movie was not something I would usually have chosen to see, but it was the only thing showing at the only air conditioned cinema in town, and so we’d plumped comfort over culture, and bought our tickets for Ace Ventura: Un Loco En Africa.

I wasn’t aware of it at first, but as the film got under way, I gradually realised that the world had cracked, and slipped. Instead of seeing the movie unfold, the characters interact, I was aware instead of the fact that they were actors in front of a camera, being filmed by a massive crew. Before each scene began, I could almost see them spring into character, prompted by the director’s shouted “ACTION”. I could picture them doing each scene again and again, could see the actor saying the words, but not the character they were pretending to be. The movie magic had cracked and through the split I could glimpse the complex, repetitive mechanics and processes underlying it.

Perhaps it was because Jim Carrey is particularly OTT in that film. Perhaps it was because all the children around me were shrieking with laughter at something I couldn’t see or comprehend. Perhaps it was a sensation crystalised by the potent mix of sun and alcohol, and sweat cooled onto a sticky back. Whatever caused it, I was fascinated.

I don’t remember the plot, but I remember noticing that the scenes took an age. One scene, in which Carrey needs to escape from a mechanical Rhino via the anus membrane, seemed to last forever. It was excruciating to watch - so painfully, desperately transparent.

The world changed, at that moment. It was not an epiphany, really - because I always knew that cinema was created by actors, directors, editors, and reels of film. This didn’t shock me - but what came as a great surprise was the lifting of the curtain, which revealed the process of putting the film together.

Have you ever seen a soap opera and been able to see the people acting? Not living out their characters, but actors saying words, remembering cues, walking carefully across rooms to find their marks? That’s what happened to the world of entertainment for me after that afternoon in the movie theatre one hot June weekend in 1996. For years afterwards, I couldn’t watch films or TV without seeing the crack. I was just too aware of the mechanisms, the way that the actors were repeating for the nth time the same lines and movements.

Strangely, it has never happened to music with me. I’ve never put on a CD and heard just a bunch of blokes playing in a room. Maybe it’s a visual thing?

Steve Mizrach, someone I’ve admired online for a long time, once said that cyberspace is the place where your attention is when you’re watching a movie, which is a definition I love. You’re not on the beach with the boy and girl in love, but neither are you quite in your plush seat holding a bucket of popcorn the size of a large man’s head. You’re somewhere else. It’s the same place your attention is when you’re on the phone to someone you love. You’re not exactly here and you’re not quite there, you’re somewhere else in limbo.

When the attention isn’t there, when we’re not drawn into this nebulous concept of cyberspace, perhaps that’s when we see the cracks, when we glimpse the mechanics of the world instead of being distracted and absorbed by the curtain.

The web feels more real. When I’m reading a book, I don’t think about the author tapping away on their typewriter (/ibook), even if it’s poorly written. I don’t imagine them scratching for similes or phrasing and rephrasing until each sentence sings. When I read on the web (read as opposed to watch or look or interact), I am hugely conscious that there is a real person behind each site, each carefully crafted bit of content, each paragraph and rant and quirk and comment.

The web is a personal space, a people space, a populated space, and it shows. There is no curtain, or if there is it’s totally transparent.

The web feels real and (while sometimes dull or frustrating or irritating) perhaps because I know that it’s created by passionate, creative and curious people in bedrooms and offices and college computer labs - I know, I’ve seen you, I’ve been you - it doesn’t come crashing down to disillusion and disappoint when the cracks begin to show, when we suddenly see the puppeteers behind the curtain, operating the machinery.

Those cracks are what makes the internet interesting.

There are a number of things which are just impossible to find in the Bolivian Andes - and believe me, I tried. Actually, there are probably hundreds of things you can’t get, but since I never actually tried to get my mitts on a golden sickle, velvet painting of Ronald Reagan or neon plastic bucket and spade, I don’t feel qualified to comment on their availability.

So let me modify my original statement. There are many things you can get hold of if the money is right, but there are a whole bunch of things which are pretty much impossible to get, though the treasure hunt to find out might fool you into thinking that your prize lies just beyond the next teetering pile of red tape. Like shoes above a size six. Or a sieve. Or a pint of Boddingtons. Or a bicycle pump.

The absence of this last item infuriated me beyond all reason and measure. I had bought a ramshackle iron sit-up-and-beg type bike from a walnut-faced man in La Cancha market in Cochabamba. The bike was easily forty years old, and had no brakes to speak of and no gears whatsoever. The tough, thin saddle bit into me hard every time I tackled a pothole - which was often, because the roads of the town were pockmarked like the face of a character in a Guy Ritchie flick. But the Cochabamba valley was relatively flat, and I could get pretty much anywhere I needed to be in under half an hour, though I might not be able to sit down when I got there. Regardless, it suited me fine.

The only thing that stood between me and two-wheeled nirvana was the complete lack of bicycle pumps in the town. That is to say that there were pumps - huge industrial jets of high-pressure air - owned by the many mechanics in the town, and held on to with fierce protection. This meant that every time my tyres developed a puncture or went a bit flat - roughly once a day - I had to find a mechanic’s workshop (and there were many), and pay forty centavos (about 5p) for a quick top-up of air.

Being the independent type of woman I am, I tried on numerous occasions to find my own pump, but with no success. I hunted around the markets and found nothing. I appealed to local Americans, who looked at me blankly or with incredulity (”You ride a bike? Here? Are you nuts?”)I tried getting one sent over from home, but it got lost in the post. There just weren’t any - though there were thousands of bicycles in the town. This, I realised, was a brilliant ruse - a way for the mechanics to retain an effective stranglehold on the bike-users of Bolivia. But at 5p a day for the freedom a bike brings, was I going to complain? Not blooming likely.

Next up on Things Which Are Really Hard To Find In Bolivia: A Sieve

In 1996 I was living in a tiny community in Bolivia, doing fieldwork for my dissertation. That’s another story in itself – if not a whole book – but not for now. This story concerns itself with learning valuable cultural lessons, dancing on the roof of the world, and the reason I will never have a second helping of potatoes ever again as long as I live.

During the second month of my fieldwork, as the local foreigner, I was invited to the inaugural blessing of a new tree nursery in a tiny hamlet about four hours drive into the mountains called Inka Katurapi. With foreign aid, the village of about fifty people was experimenting with planting trees to prevent harmful erosion of the topsoil.

I didn’t think they were going to feed me when I got there so before I left my fieldwork site, I had a hearty Andean breakfast, consisting of potatoes. Now, potatoes in the UK come in three basic types: new, medium and baking. Potatoes in Bolivia however come in about 39 variations, with different colours and sizes and even tastes. Yes, amazingly, all potatoes do not taste the same. Anyway, beans (or even potatoes). I scoffed about a pound of potatoes before I left the village because I figured that would last me until the next meal (whenever that was going to be).

Driving over the Andes towards the village took about a couple of hours (there was impressive scenery, there were llamas). When I got to the village, nestled high in Los Valles, the party was about to kick off. This was not a fiesta, the other typical kind of Andean celebration, which involves drinking so much chicha (maize beer) that you go blind and waking up in a pool of your own (or worse, someone else’s) vaguely maize-smelling vomit three days later limbs aching from dancing the cueca, which is basically the Bolivian equivalent of Morris dancing and involves a lot of hanky-waving. This celebration was to be a rather more staid affair. There was to be a visit to the alpaca herd, a look at the nursery, a feast and then some speeches, they told me as soon as I arrived. Woah, hang on a minute, did someone say feast? Even though I’d eaten a few hours ago, appetite in the Andes is a funny thing and a little goes a long way, so my breakfast of potatoes was still weighing heavily on my stomach. A feast sounded like something I wasn’t prepared for, in an appetite kind of way.

So off we went to look at the alpacas and then at the nursery (yawn) and then there was the feast. In the middle of a muddy field on a steep slope, the entire village of about 45 people gathered around, bringing ingredients for the picnic. One person from each family brought an aguayu (a woven cloth used as a sort of backpack, if you tie it right (ask me to demonstrate sometime)) wrapped neatly around their contribution to the feast. Laying them down in the middle of the circle, one by one, they were unfolded to display the yummy contents within.

Quick caveat: I swear I am not making this up. Everything here actually happened, and I still have the scars (mental, physical and emotional) to prove it. Oh, and the photos.

Every single person brought potatoes. Every single one. Okay, a few people had also thoughtfully brought some llahua which is a scary foaming spicy tomato and chilli sauce that looks like the kind of spit you only ever see after a long dental operation, and tastes like burning. But aside from that, potatoes and lots of them. About twenty blankets worth. That, in case you hadn’t figured it out, is a lot of potatoes.

As the village guest, I got the village chair while everyone else sat on the ground. When I moved to sit with them, the head of the village, a man who wore a symbolic whip tied diagonally over his shoulder, shouted at me and gave me a guirnalda (a stiff floral garland that fits around the neck and over the shoulders and makes it impossible to move your arms from elbows up). So I sat on the village chair, higher than everyone and feeling uncomfortable. One of the women gave me an empty tin plate and indicated that I should help myself from the blanket. I quickly cottoned on that no-one was going to start on the food before I’d at least made a token effort so I headed over to the blanket, grabbed a few smallish spuds and a bit of red-spit sauce and plonked myself back down on the chair. My plate was immediately whisked away and the next time I saw it, mere seconds later, it was piled high with potatoes of every shape and hue.

There is one kind of potato in the Andes which deserves special mention here. Its name is the ch’uño and it is pure evil. It’s basically a freeze-dried potato which starts life sort of medium-sized and juicy and via a lengthy process of freezing and thawing in the open air, becomes a small black nugget which keeps for up to three years, usually in a sack in the animal shed, and tastes rather like the insole of a particularly sweaty hiker’s boot. It’s the kind of food that could only make sense in a region where shortages are common and something that is cheap, filling and easily-reconstituted is a valuable commodity. But it still tastes like shit.

My plate was piled high with ch’uño, of course, and I valiantly picked my way around them, trying to smother their minging taste in dentist spit as best I could. Like the polite girl that I am, I struggled but eventually managed to finish everything on my plate though I felt dangerously heavy. Bear in mind that there was also nothing to drink: no liquid to wash down the massive quantities of starch that were currently coagulating like a large boulder inside me.

They say that it only takes a pound of potatoes to kill a baby but I reckon you’d have to throw them very accurately indeed. Feeling full to bursting, I wondered what the equivalent starch tolerance level was for an adult female. I felt I was rapidly approaching that level. In fact, I FELT LIKE I HAD ROSEMARY’S POTATO BABY GESTATING INSIDE ME. Gah.

I turned to the head honcho with a strained but satisfied look on my face (I always was a good actress) and said, “Que rica! – most delicious” When I turned back, there was a woman standing in front of me holding a plate of potatoes dotted with ch’uno and red sauce. Hang on a minute. Is this Groundhog Day? Whatthefuck? I took the plate with a smile and a bilious lurch and started to eat. Again.

I did the best I could. All I can say in my defence was that as a well brought up young lady, my mummy taught me to eat whatever I was given. And so I did, even though I thought the effort would kill me, if the starch didn’t cripple me first. Once you’ve eaten a pound of potatoes, you feel full. Once you’ve eaten two pounds of potatoes, you begin to think you’ll never move again. By the middle of the third pound, you’re starting to wonder whether it would be easier to try and swallow one whole and choke yourself to death.

I handed the clean plate to the honcho, said “Thank you, but if I eat any more, I’m going to explode.” He laughed, took the plate and said words which I struggled to translate, but which I was sure involved the words “next course”. Sure enough, there was a second course … another traditional Andean dish – potato and pasta soup, which is basically another way of saying boiled potatoes and boiled pasta with the water left in the pan. They handed me a shallow bowl. I took one bite and blanched (no pun intended). I put the plate down on the ground, unsteadily and apologising profusely to everyone around. I’m sorry. I cannot eat another thing. I’m so sorry.

The relief on the faces of the villagers was obvious. I was confused, then suddenly, it clicked. In the UK and much of the western world, it’s considered polite to finish everything on your plate. In rural Bolivia however, if you lick your plate clean it implies that you’re still hungry, and so out of courtesy they will keep feeding you until you stop asking for more. The head honcho nodded at my apology, said sagely “You must have been very hungry indeed,” and then proceeded to give a lengthy speech in Quechua about the new nursery and all the benefits it would bring. I was extremely glad that the political tradition of long speeches was upheld equally in the Andes because it gave me a chance to digest.

My speech was not quite so lengthy and relied almost entirely on the artful use of sign language, stilted Quechua and a smattering of burps. No-one in the audience spoke English, and only a few spoke Spanish, which made orating problematic – though I think I came up with a crowd-pleaser when I rubbed my heaving stomach and declared “Mmmm … potatoes yummy”. Everyone smiled. On reflection, perhaps they were just relieved that I’d finally stopped eating. More speeches were made and then the honcho summoned for the band to start to play.

Have you ever heard an Andean band play? No, not those guys with the bright ponchos and the pan-pipes playing “El Condor Pasa” in Leicester Square … the real thing. Paul Simon wouldn’t recognise it, I can assure you. The village band consisted of five men with flute-like objects (quinos), one bloke with an enormous bass drum and a small child with a snare drum and a bad sense of rhythm. They played breathless synchopated tooting to a pounding rhythm. Everyone listened.

Then suddenly the head honcho stood up and said something in Quechua, waving in my direction. I fought my way through the layers of starch that had invaded my brain to translate it. Now…our visitor….to dance…future gerund…reflexive first person plural….

No wait, that can’t be right. I must have got that reflexive bit the wrong way around. Bloody grammar. He must have said, “Now we will dance for our visitor”. Surely. Surely. Oh god. Please. No.

He gestured again and indicated that I should stand up. Ah. Apparently my translation was right the first time: “Now our guest will dance for us”. And so, on wobbly legs and full of potato, I did the universal embarrassed uncle/Nelson Mandela dance, aided by the tight garland around my upper arms, making it impossible to move too much, and accompanied by sharp tooting and an urgent drum.

Thankfully, once the laughter had subsided, the women of the village got up to dance too, dragging me with them.

The dance consisted of holding hands in a circle and running round in a clockwise direction, then suddenly changing direction and running the other way for a bit. Meanwhile, two women would get into the middle of the circle and spin each other around. I was breathless, being 12,000 feet above sea level; full, having eaten three pounds of potatoes; thirsty, having not drunken anything since breakfast; and most of all clumsy, although that may have had something to do with the fact that we were dancing on a 45 degree ploughed field. The dance continued this way for a good ten minutes. Suddenly, I was grabbed by a short, fierce-looking woman in a bowler hat.

Now, many Bolivian women wear felt bowler hats, and some are fierce looking. But almost all of them are beneath five feet tall. I am not. I’m 5’9” and I towered over this woman as she grabbed my hands and we started to spin each other, one arm over the head. Because she was so short, spinning her presented no problem, and her wide colourful skirts spread out into a bell shape and brushed my legs as she span. But every time she tried to spin me, I ended up being smacked in the face by my own forearm. Repeatedly, with every turn. Not very graceful. And all to the sound of complex, breathy music, which after a while, sort of made sense.

So picture the scene. I was 12,000 feet up in the Andes, full to bursting, vowing never to eat another potato as long as I live, being smacked repeatedly in the head and tripping over my own muddy boots in a field full of people I could barely communicate with. I was breathless, dizzy and dancing on the roof of the world. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.

I’ve got a sound in my head - an earworm. You know how usually it’s a song? This evening, all evening, it was Craig David (due to Davo and Luke and I singing “Luke Martin all over your *BOINK*” for reasons I can’t remember during Davo’s lovely dinner). And then, about an hour ago, listening to John Martyn (who slurs his words so enormously, it’s difficult to hear what he’s saying) I started thinking of the mantra of the Trufi-boys in La Paz.

By my second month in Bolivia, I was living in a chalett in Sopocachi Alto, a relatively good neighbourhood of La Paz close to the canyon wall. A chalett is not a Heidi-log cabin type affair. It’s a prefab, freestanding house (in my case, free-standing only by about six inches on all sides. I swear, if Bolivia had anything like the trade descriptions act) with a big sink on the roof to do the washing, and a view out towards mount Illimani on the other side of the canyon. I would stand on the roof in the early morning beforte heading into town for work, having huffed and puffed my way up the spiral metal staircase through thin Andean air and cold morning wind, and watch the city waking up in front of me, with the cold shadow of the canyon wall only a hundred feet behind.

To get into the centre of town, I could walk for half an hour or so (which was fine on the way down the hill, but hellish coming back up, especially tired at the end of the day and at 11,000 feet above sea level), catch a cab, or take the Trufi - a converted VW combi van capable of carrying thirteen people, squashed in tight, and travelling a fixed route through the city. My local Trufi started at the bottom of our road, and traversed the centre of the city to get to La Ceja (literally, eyebrow), a satellite development clinging to the top edge of the canyon wall above La Paz.

The Trufi team consists of two people - the conductor (driver) and the niño, the boy who collects fares from the passengers and operates the sliding door on the side of the vehicle. Back then, each ride cost between sixty centavos (about 7p) and one Boliviano (about 12p) and could take anything from ten to forty minutes, depending on the traffic and other passengers. See, the Trufi may have had an established route, but it stopped wherever the passengers dictated. Even if you were wedged firmly between two cholitas on the back seat, with nine people and an awful lot of shopping bags and skirts between you and the door, when you wanted to get off, you had to call out “bajaré en la esquinita!” (I’m getting off on the corner), “me lo para!” (stop for me!) or “voy a bajar!” (I’m going to get off), and then clamber forward over the laps, seats and heads of the other passengers, chanting the whole time “discúlpame…con permiso…perdon…” to squeeze through the sliding door on the side of the vehicle. The thing is, you couldn’t call out too soon, because you’d end up being ejected from the Trufi before your intended destination, and you couldn’t start getting up before the Trufi had stopped, because you would be quite literally wedged into your seat by the huge and expansive skirts worn by the cholitas who frequented the route. So you had to wait until the last possible moment before yelling out, and then the vehicle would suddenly stop, and you’d all be hurled forward, shopping, small children and everything. The the process of self-extracation would begin. See, the thing is it was relatively easy for the people in the front two rows of seats, and even easier for the ones who sat up front with the driver. But if you were stuck in the back seat, especially way off in the back corner, you were pretty much screwed. Also, if you were a good six inches taller than the average Bolivian, headroom was always an issue, most especially when removing yourself from a crowded and tiny van, but also when sitting in the Trufi, and every bump and pothole in the road (and there were many) caused you to make the sudden and uncomfortable vertical journey between sparsely-sprung seat and hard metal roof. Yowch.

Since the Trufis have no numbers by which to identify them (partly because of high illiteracy rates, and partly because of flexibility), one of the niño’s main jobs was to intone the places through which the Trufi would be passing on its route, shouted out repeatedly against an ear-bleedingly loud cueca or merengue compilation tape blasting tinnily from the driver’s stereo. But in the same way that Evening Standard salesmen on Tube stations who say the same thing again and again throughout the evening begin to sound like they’re shouting “Stennah!” or “Ay-lay!” for “Paper Late”, the Trufi boys manage to turn their litany of destinations into a mesmerising mantra “S’pcachi-Plaz’spaña-IsabellaCatolica-Praaaa-do-Estaciónes-AltaCeeeee-jaaaa…” All the places through which the Trufi passes - Sopocachi, Plaza del España, Plaza Isabel la Catolica, El Prado, train station, bus station, Communidad El Alto and La Ceja, but rolled together, like a long and strange name, as odd and yet as strangely familiar as every journey.

That’s what’s been in my head this evening. That litany, especially the way the boy intoned AltaCeeeejaaaa. And suddenly, without realising, it’s time for bed, where I’ll listen to another litany as I fall asleep - the > it’s an adult lullaby”>shipping forecast, circumnavigating the country, calling in safety and security to those on the sea, and those tucked warm and fluey under dreamy duvets and over clean, cool egyptian cotton sheets.

[Incidentally, here's a site about the extensive and efficient Micro and Trufi network of Cochabamba, Bolivia, which is the second city I lived in, for nine months, although I never took a Trufi there, because by then I'd bought a bike. And all I can remembver of public transport in that city was that they seemed very keen on running me over....]