Ciao, Sucre – Quite The Departure

Very belated posting because Uyuni didn{t have a USB port on the computer and then I was out in the middle of nowhere for a few days. Lots of writing to catch up on!

6/15/11 11am
I’m writing this several days late, things have been pretty busy all the time. I’m on the bus right now heading to Uyuni, but I want to do a little wrap up on my time in Sucre. First off, my last couple hours there were completely insane. On Monday afternoon, I continued my quest to find out about when the buses would be running again and when I was told that there was one leaving that night, I decided to go for it and buy the ticket in case the blockade started up again in the morning. This was a bit after 4pm and I was supposed to be at the terminal at 5:30 for a 6pm departure. Scurried around town, going to Fox to pay and say goodbye and going to the Kodak store to pick up my camera. Well, what was I told – they weren’t able to fix it, but they didn’t have it yet, it would be there at five. They said that people might be able to fix it in La Paz but they couldn’t do anything about it there. Would have been nice if they at least had it ready for me since they couldn’t do anything for it! They said it would be there by 5 and I told them I would come by then and needed it then since I would be on my way to the bus terminal and leaving Sucre, and they assured me that was fine. Decided I had no choice but to buy another camera and deal with the Canon once I’m back in the US, but there was no time to do that then. I practically ran home and packed all my stuff and then took a taxi, intending to just stop for a minute by the store to get my unfixed camera and then continue on to the bus terminal. With all the evening traffic, got to the store at around 5:30 and the camera still wasn’t there! I took all my stuff out of the taxi and waited in the store for another ten minutes while they called the guy who had the camera to come. Eventually got the camera and grabbed another taxi to go to the terminal, which was hard to get because most of them refused to go that direction because there were still blockades.
Got to the area of the terminal around 5:45 and the terminal was still shut down, as I had been told it would be, but my bus was nowhere to be seen on the street outside the terminal where it was supposed to be. I asked some people but no one knew what was going on; they were all just hanging around, having no idea when any buses would leave but completely used to that situation. A bit after six, I called the agency that I had gotten the ticket from to find out what was going on, and they called the bus company and told me that the bus was still making its way up to the terminal area but would be there soon. The blockade was supposed to end at six, but even at 6:30, the buses were all still diagonal and sideways blocking the road and I was afraid that maybe my bus was somewhere but I just couldn’t find it. This whole time, I was lugging around my bags and asking a ton of people but couldn’t find anyone else who was on my bus. Eventually, the correct bus pulled onto the still blocked road and parked. A crowd of people surrounded it, but the driver got out and walked away. I asked someone and he said we might have to wait another hour or two. That would not have been fun while carrying my bag, especially with no nearby cafes and restaurants to sit down while still keeping an eye on the bus. I stood with the crowd for a bit and then ended up being told to follow this girl who seemed to be the secretary for the bus. She walked really quickly down several blocks and around a few corners and I had no idea where we were going or what we were doing, but I just followed the girl with the yellow sweater along with some others. We arrived at the bus, which must have driven around a different way to move away from the blockade. There was a huge crowd of people, way more than the bus would allow, and those of us with tickets shoved aboard. Once we were all in our seats, there were a lot more people still wanting to get on, but they didn’t let them, for once not filling the aisles with people. It was over an hour late, but we finally were off for the three hour journey to Potosi. Buses here are always an adventure!
My three weeks in Sucre were the first time that I really stayed in and got to know a foreign city. I spent three weeks in Huancayo, Peru, but was based primarily at my homestay and the vet clinic and all I really knew of the city was how to get to the supermarket. I had my home base and various daily activities in Sucre, but I got into a system where I felt much less like a tourist, much more at home. I recognized the cashiers at the supermarket, I bought my warm fresh bread from the same woman every couple days, I knew where to find everything I needed at the bustling open central market, I had my favorite cheap but fast internet cafe, I easily knew my way around all the main parts of the city. I wasn’t constantly trying to get my bearings and figure out what was going on – I had my places to go during the day, and the mid-afternoons first at the vet and then free to wander, eat ice cream, and people watch, completely comfortable in my familiar surroundings. Sucre was very safe and I had no qualms about the 15 minute walk home late at night, knowing which routes to take to avoid the steeper hills. I still stood out as a foreigner, but was no longer stopping at corners to look at my map. I was the only foreigner who frequented Freya’s for lunch and got used to the unspoken system of the lunch routine there. I took public transportation rather than taxis and fell into my place within the community.
From talking with the many other travelers in Sucre, I wished at times that I was in an actual homestay. They had called it a homestay and yes, we shared a house with the family, but had completely separate quarters and only saw each other in passing. It would have been a really good experience to actually live with the family, to eat with them (though being vegetarian would make that difficult), to talk with them and see the city with them, to be more immersed in the culture. But I had lunch with Isabel every weekday and got a sense of what university life was like for her, as well as growing up with a large family in the south of Bolivia. I had my kids in the morning and students in the evening, so I still spent a good bit of time getting to know people as they went about their daily routines. So a homestay would have been nice, but I did have complete independence to go around as I pleased and plan my own activities as I experienced living within the community and sharing stories with other travelers from around the world.
I’m going to miss my kids and I really wish I had more pictures to better remember them. As young as they are, it’s fun to predict what they will be like as they get older. Maria-Elba, one of the older girls and the daughter of one of the teachers, is incredibly smart and creative, but is really spoiled and entitled so will probably turn into quite the bossy one, though still with a good heart. Luis, who always used water to style his hair in the mirror before lunch, is definitely going to be pretty good looking when he grows up. He was sometimes a rascal but he knew when too much was too much and stopped with a charming little smile when I asked him to. Miguel, always with a snot-streaked face, was very violent and would beat others up over tiny little things, and he absolutely would not respond to any sort of direction; I’m hoping he changes his ways! Bianca was a complete sweetie, but also quite the tattletale and would get really upset if anyone did anything else wrong; she will be a the teacher’s pet. Alina was a very pretty girl, fairly shy and a follower, and was not very motivated to learn because she was such a perfectionist so she could never get it right. She sometimes needed to write out a page of letters for kindergarten in the afternoons and she would refuse to do it, so one of the teachers would do it for her, simply saying that Alina didn’t want to and someone had to do it. Hopefully she will be able to start doing her own work soon, I got her fairly confident in writing out her name and tried to get her not to worry that every letter was not exactly perfect. My favorite of the babies was Cati, Maria-Elba’s little sister. Every day, she would ask me what my name was and repeat it over and over again until the other little ones around her started chanting it as well. She was a huge lovebug but also very stubborn, needing to have things her way. She wanted to hang out with the other kids since her sister was there, but she was actually really mature for her age and did well with them when we allowed it. I loved little Pedro’s huge eyes, and the patience of three year old Ayalin who set to comforting Aileen, the new baby who was having a hard time adjusting. I always love kids in other countries because tend to be less spoiled and bratty, less focused on wanting this toy, needing that, it’s more about making do with what they have, playing outside, turning anything into a toy. Though where I was, some discipline would have helped, especially for a bunch of those boys!
Sucre is an eclectic mix of traditional and modern, rich and poor. Most women carried their babies wrapped in colorful blankets and slung across their bags, but there was the occasional toddler rolled around in a stroller. On the micros every day, there were students heading to school, dressed either in their solid colored uniforms for private schools or with their long white coat over other clothes for public schools. Kids wearing makeup and carrying purses or cell phones sat alongside other children with dirt-covered skin and tattered clothing and shoes that were far too big or small. Next to business women with their fancy suits, heels, and purses, there were traditionally dressed women with their hats, ruffled skirts, shawls, and long braided hair fastened at the bottom by intricate ties of big black beads with braided yard. The braids were held against the women’s backs by a part of their vests – a strip of fabric along their up back into which they tucked their hair. These women, of much lower socioeconomic class, carried large bags filled with the items they would sell during the day, and many spoke primarily Quechua rather than Spanish. In the US, the socioeconomic gaps between people are less visible simply in passing, especially in the middle class society that we live in. But in Sucre, the differences were constantly evident yet fit together perfectly to form a complete society with strong components of both past and present, a place where everyone fit in their own place and didn’t constantly need more.