Cultural Misunderstandings

Ah, where to begin? I’ve been putting off this post in the hope of gaining more clarity into why certain things work the way they do here. But, on the other hand, if I wait too long, I may get used to the status quo and be unable to capture the details as I see them now, two months into our stay in La Paz.

I guess the biggest frustrations I run into on an almost daily basis are 1) la hora Boliviana (Bolivian time); 2) Bolivians’ apparent disregard for scheduled things, whether they be a meeting, a working session, or information they owe you (which I often view as procrastination); and 3) their indirect communication style (or lack of communication, in fact). I don’t mean to come off as condescending or a snob, and I definitely don’t mean any offense. There are many things to love about Bolivians and I am by no means trying to be disrespectful. What I am about to elaborate on are simply things that I personally see as different and somewhat difficult, fully realizing that of course things are bound to be different here. I also realize that I might be making sweeping generalizations (I am sure there are many individuals out there that don’t fit this bill.) But since this blog is (more often than not) my way of noting cultural difference and nuances, I want to capture them while they are still fresh in my mind.

La hora Boliviana – I think I have talked about this before. But basically it boils down to this. You will agree on a certain time with someone (for a meeting, dinner, etc.) and most often than not, the other person (if Bolivian) will show up at least 30 minutes late. Not that big a deal when you get used to it and plan accordingly (after all, often Bulgarians and other Latin Americans function the same way). It becomes a problem, however, when you need to plan your day around a given meeting. With an hour or two delay, it is almost impossible to plan anything with certainty. The other day, our Internet was out. We were told someone would come by at 18:30, so we waited (instead of going out as planned). Well, by 19:30 no-one had showed up. So we left. But in our eyes, we had also just wasted an hour waiting.

Disregard for scheduled things – This is somewhat connected to la hora Boliviana, in the sense that people don’t seem to take appointments of any sort seriously. But there is something else. People here love to put things off for tomorrow, then next week, then next month. So, basically if you are told “tomorrow”… well, it may or may not happen the following week. I had a friend come to do research for two weeks in La Paz. He was supposed to interview several officials in different institutions (both governmental and non-). Several times he showed up at the agreed-upon time and the person simply wasn’t there or didn’t show up. There was no communication whatsoever letting my friend know of the cancellation or delay. At best, I find that disrespectful. But I guess people here don’t view it this way. This also extends to my work…. I am often waiting on people to give me information or look over something. There is only so much gentle prodding I can do (especially given the very hierarchical and political, as I have learned, arrangement at the office). Sigh. Sometimes, with a little bit of guilt, I do yearn for the efficiency of the U.S. private sector (and I never thought I would be saying this, since I left said private sector in 2006).

And we get to the communication style. Well, I already mentioned some things above. People here don’t appear to be great communicators. When they cannot make a meeting, they don’t call or email you to reschedule. They often just simply don’t show up. Or if they do, it is often only to tell you that it will have to wait till tomorrow. Another side of the story is that people (at least in my experience in the office) tend to have a very unclear and round-about way of telling you something. It definitely borders on the proverbial beating around the bush. And then you wonder why things take so long or why there are so many misunderstandings. I have emailed my direct supervisor several times to give her updates on my work. She hasn`t emailed me back once.

I have noticed though that people have a special way of communicating when they want to get their way. I call it the “Bolivian whine”. It is hard to describe in words, but basically to get you to do something, people, and women especially, employ a pleading technique. For example: “Señorita, por favor, señoritaa, pero porque te voy a engañar, señoritaaa” (Miss, please miss, why would I try to cheat you, miss) said one sales lady to me who was trying to convince me the Bolivar (one of the big Bolivian soccer teams) jersey she was showing me was an original. I find it amusing, how quickly the switch from serious, I mean business, to pleading, I am a victim, can happen. But it works! I have heard people employ it at work, when they need something urgently from someone. I should take note and adopt this. May save me some waiting time. I was told on Friday by an acquaintance here that once the other side says “Bueno, bueno” and nods, that means that you will get what you asked for. Good to know.

And finally, thought I would note down, things that people seem to find strange about me.

1)    I am the only one, it seems, to bring my own reusable shopping bag to the supermarket. The boys who pack the groceries at the register gave each other looks in the beginning (after all, am I crazy not to want to augment my collection of plastic bags? more is better, basic economics teaches us), but now they have gotten used to it and just smile.
2)    I don`t eat a huge lunch. Lunch is the most important meal of the day here. If you order a set lunch (almuerzo) outside, you will get an appetizer + soup + main dish + dessert. When I bring a sandwich to work, people often offer to give me some of their food, for fear I will starve.
3)    I can`t eat lunch immediately after eating a huge piece of cake. When it`s someone`s birthday at the office, we celebrate by having cake or salteñas around 11:30. On the days that we do, I usually eat lunch around 2 or sometimes even 3 pm. People don´t understand this and ask me every time why I am not eating lunch at 1, as we usually do. I give the same explanation, every time: I am not hungry yet because of the cake we just had. I guess it is not convincing.
4)    We don`t have any kind of hired help at home. The doorman to our building asked me once, why don`t you hire a maid, when I asked where the nearest laundry place was. We do our own shopping, cooking, cleaning, and laundry and we are foreigners … IMPOSSIBLE.
5)    Why I would ever come to Bolivia. People often ask me how long I have been here or how long I will stay. When I say that I will be here for a year, they often look puzzled and ask me why I decided to come here in the first place. It helps to say you will be here longer than a few months. People tend to take you more seriously. You are not merely passing through. But they still don`t fully understand why you would come here in the first place.

Daring the World's Most Dangerous Road

Date of trip: Saturday, 3 October 2009

It is impossible to come to Bolivia (especially to La Paz) and not hear of the World’s Most Dangerous Road or Death Road (El Camino de la Muerte) as Bolivians refer to it. It used to be the case that you would not only hear of it, but also have to travel on it if you were going to the Amazon region of the country. That is, until 2007 when a new road was finally finished and opened to traffic. Cars still sometimes use the Death Road, but rarely. Thankfully. Because the road’s “fame” originated from the 200 to 300 victims it would take every year; people who plunged to their end off the edge of the cliff. Today, the Death Road is mostly used by tourists on bike tours down to the Yungas town of Coroico. Many tour agencies in La Paz offer the trip – some more experienced and better equipped than others. That’s why it is very important to pick well before you make the trip. We heard stories of people going on tours with agencies that had bikes with very bad brakes. You don’t want to risk that on this road, trust me. When it came to picking whom we would go with, the decision boiled down to two agencies – Gravity Assisted and Madness Bolivia. Both are recommended by the Lonely Planet and both had been recommended to us by friends who had personally taken the tour. Madness was offering a discount on the price at the time we were looking to go, so with Madness we went.

The days before we were booked to make the trip, it had rained almost every day. I wasn’t looking forward to biking the road with rain or fog. Luckily, the day of, it cleared up. The sky was bright blue; the sun beating down strongly. We had heard that normally a group on any day consists of at most 10 to 12 people. The day we went, there were 24 of us! Talk about a caravan of bikes. (We later learned that a tour group of 14 Aussies had signed up at the last minute.) We met up early on Saturday morning, had breakfast, gathered our gear, loaded up into three mini-buses and departed for El Cumbre – the high point, from which our descent would begin. Three guides plus the mini-buses were to accompany us all the way down to Yolosa (our end point). After some brief instructions and testing of the bikes, we were on our way. The first part of the descent follows the new, paved road. It is a fast, smooth ride downhill. Hugging the curves, wind in your face, enjoying the scenery. I might add that when we started, I was wearing my ski jacket and gloves. It was pretty cold, especially with the wind. The lower we rode, the warmer it got, and the layers started coming off. The whole group stopped a couple of times. I stopped more often to take pictures and just admire the scenery without having to worry whether I might topple over. The landscape down to the Yungas is pretty impressive. You start out at La Cumbre with nothing but barren rocks and brown hillsides. But this quickly changes and the metamorphosis goes through more grass and some bushes until you reach the point where the tropical vegetation begins and the humidity shoots up. We passed through a drug checkpoint (although there they mostly check people coming from the other direction, since that is coca country) and a checkpoint where we had to pay 25 Bs each to use the road to Coroico and sign our names, along with passport numbers and nationality. I have never been to a country where there are as many checkpoints as I have seen in Bolivia so far, but that is a subject for another post. 

At one point, our descent down the new road ended and the real “death part” of the journey began – on the old, narrow, gravel road. When I saw it, it was hard for me to imagine that this road had been used with such frequency in the past. It was even harder for me to imagine that two cars, let alone two trucks or buses, could pass each other on the narrow surface. Because that is all it is. A narrow, flat gravel surface that winds along the edge of the mountains, with no protective barrier of any kind separating you from the open air. Needless to say, I tried to stay far from the edge and relied on my brakes quite a bit, especially in the beginning. After a while, you get used to the surface, the constant bumps and become more familiar with what your bike can and can’t do on this road. And you loosen up and enjoy the ride. And it is a spectacular ride. Aside from the sheer adrenaline rush, the stunning scenery all around you makes for an almost surreal experience. You feel really tiny compared to the massive green hills around you, the cliff below you, and the brown thread of a road winding its way along the hillside far ahead or below. By the time we arrived in Yolosa, about 4 hours later, I was in a T-shirt, sweaty, and ready for a beer.
 

After a brief pit stop, lunch, and a dip in the swimming pool in a nearby hotel, we made our way to the place where we would spend the night. (We had decided to stay overnight in Yolosa. Everyone else in our group, except for one person, returned that same afternoon to La Paz.) La Senda Verde – eco-lodge and animal refuge. We had been told it is a pretty unique and fun place. We were too tired to explore that evening but the next day we found out why. We made the acquaintance of several monkeys (capuchin, spider and squirrel), a couple of dogs, a very curious coati, a bear, and several guinea fowl, macaws, and parrots. The thing that most amazed me about the place is that all these animals co-existed in perfect harmony – the dogs playing with the monkeys, the monkeys teasing the macaws, and the coati… well the coati was just nosy about everything. Mostly, it would sniff along the ground with its long snout (our hunch was that he was looking for ants or worms), but then when it got close to us, it sniffed us out pretty much everywhere and later proceeded to do the same with one of the dogs while it was sleeping. After breakfast, we observed the bear being fed, after which we decided to visit the pool. That’s where we discovered the capuchin monkeys – playful, cheeky and super curious. One minute they were trying to steal something away from us, the next, one was giving me a hug. They were the most adorable things and made the cutest sounds, especially when they weren’t getting their way. Now, how can anyone resist that? We played with the capuchins and one spider monkey and her baby for over an hour. That has probably been the highlight of my stay in Bolivia so far. At the end, it was hard to leave. And I guess some of the monkeys didn’t want us to leave either. The spider monkey and her baby hugged me as I got up to go and promptly fell asleep in my lap. Trying to separate myself from them was quite an endeavor, as they would simply change position and fall back asleep again. Well, in the end the owner had to extricate me from them, sad as it was.

We met up with the Madness group that had done the tour the following day to return to La Paz. Up at La Cumbre, it was foggy and rainy. Guess we really had lucked out with the weather after all.

Lake Titicaca and Back

I have fallen behind on reporting back on our weekend trips, so here come a few posts for trips that took place over the past month.

Date of trip: 19-20 September 2009

We were told that Lake Titicaca is a magical place. A place where the energy is simply different. We set out, curious to see what we would find. But first things first: the trip there.

There are many buses and minibuses that leave for Copacabana, the town on the shores of Lake Titicaca, from La Paz. We opted for a somewhat more comfortable and relatively expensive option (well, the roundtrip ticket came out to $18) – the tourist bus. The tourist bus is just as it sounds – a bus that carries tourists to Copacabana. (A very different feel from the regular buses, which take locals and their bundles of belongings and goods. And perhaps we will opt for that option next time.) Most of our co-passengers snoozed all the way to Titicaca, but we were pretty excited about the scenery. The bus left La Paz and climbed up to El Alto. We made our way through the traffic- and market-filled streets, even passing an open-air market for furniture (yes, wardrobes, desks, beauty stands, and the like). El Alto, as you may have read in a previous post is like an anthill – teeming with activity. And only on this trip did I realize how HUGE the city is. It stretches out for kilometers, given that there are no natural barriers. There is just the flat Altiplano that stretches as far as the eye can see. As such, it is mostly a ride on a flat, straight road, with dry fields whizzing past and mountains peeking out over the horizon. Pretty uneventful until we got to the Strait of Tiquina. Here things got interesting. At its narrowest point, the strait is only 850m (2600 ft) wide but there is no bridge. To continue to Copacabana you have to make it across in a boat. What happens to the bus you may ask? Well, it makes it across on a raft. So, we got off the bus and got into a line for the boats to make it across. (As a side note, here Milos made a friend - a little kid who stood behind him and had a distorted understanding of personal space. And we are not talking about the US concept of personal space, which is quite generous. But even according to our concept of personal space, this kid was overstepping all boundaries. At one point, he simply hugged Milos’s leg. I laughed. Milos didn’t find it so funny.) But onto the boats. While we were waiting in line, our bus made it onto a raft and slowly made its way across the strait. Ah, the suspense of watching a big bus bobbing on the waves and not knowing whether it may tip over the next minute, taking with it most of your belongings (we kept our valuables on us, so that gave us some peace of mind). In the end, all ended well. Both the bus and the passengers made it across safely. And why shouldn’t we have? After all, this “trip” is repeated hundreds of times each day. The locals of course were not fazed. That’s when you realize you are slightly jaded in your Western ways. On the other side of the strait sits Bolivia’s navy base. That’s right. The Bolivians are all prepared for the moment they get their access to the sea back. They even have a monument in Tiquina commemorating this hope.

The rest of the ride to Copacabana was pretty uneventful. Copacabana itself is a small place – the “center” is a cross-section of a few streets – and, as we learned, quite dusty. For some reason I had pictured a town on a lake to be overgrown with luscious vegetation. Don’t ask me why I harbored such thoughts. After all, Copacabana is at an altitude of almost 4000 m (12000 ft), at which little vegetation grows, and it is currently the dry season. I guess it was something about the association with water that immediately made me think of green. 

There are a few things to know about Copacabana:

1. The trout (trucha) is excellent – no matter how it’s cooked or where. And, believe me, there is no escaping it. It is sold everywhere.
2. The coffee is terrible. For anyone who might be traveling there: buy yourself mate (herbal tea) instead.
3. For amazing chocolate fondue, visit the restaurant at Hotel La Cupula. You will not regret it.
4. Don’t underestimate the climb up to El Calvario (one of the hills surrounding Copacabana) and a popular hike. It took us a while to get up there. As has become the norm, I was out of breath in 5 minutes. But the views of the lake are incredible. You forget it’s a lake and think of it as an ocean – water stretching as far as the eye can see. We walked up to watch the sunset, but it was overcast. However, we were lucky. Just as we turned around to leave, the sun peeked out from under the clouds, just before setting “behind” the lake. Up there, the energy is different. It’s only you, the cliffs, and the lake. Nature rules.

 We didn’t make it out to the islands this time, which we were told is the most spectacular part about visiting Titicaca, as we didn’t have enough time and didn’t want to rush it. But next time we are definitely going at least to Isla del Sol (Island of the Sun) and maybe even Isla de la Luna (Island of the Moon). After all, Copacabana is only three hours away from La Paz. And then it’s another 1.5-2 hrs to Isla del Sol. Hopefully, before the rainy season starts.
 

Kitchen Surprises

You never know what's going to make you laugh in your kitchen. Example.


via Milos