23?

My birthday was a riot. At the Comedor the 80 or so kids sang me a birthday song that was heart warming and made me teary eyed. It will not be easy to leave soon. I blew out my candles and my face was shoved in the chocolate sheet cake by my loving co-workers.

The evening plans were to meet in the Plaza and head to a Karaoke bar that my friend Jorge promised would be a success and he promised to sing.

A stupid grin crossed my face as we pulled up to “Celos” (Jealousy), a throw-back to Las Vegas love lounges complete with little neon hearts above the bar, a cheesy awning above janky French doors and precariously hung dusty, navy curtains. The bar was old west style; we ordered the only kind of beer available and sat uncomfortably in our cute, but dirty love seats sans cushions. I couldn’t have dreamed up a more comical decor and ambiance and of course I loved every minute of it.

The first man that sang made my face convulse uncontrollably, probably survival instincts working to close passages leading to my ear drums. Painful and funny and I knew at that moments we had chosen the right place.

Later, a big woman in pink sitting at a table with her friends was holding the wireless microphone and “bringing down the house” with her sultry boleros. After her song ended I yelled “bravo” and was surprised to that the clientele was not as roused and applauded the same for Bolivian Aretha Franklin as they did for one drunken, tone-deaf Casanova.

Jorge chose to sing a traditional Bolivian song. I will try to explain why this made me pee my pants. Santa Cruz, the wealthiest department of Bolivia and its people, “Cruceños” or “Camba” have fervent regionalist pride, a desire regional autonomy and walk a thin line bordering on racism towards the country’s indigenous majority (located predominately within Bolivia’s mountainous, Altiplano region). While traditional music from Santa Cruz uses brass instruments, the traditional indigenous music uses strings and high-pitched flutes. Jorge is a poster child for Santa Cruz’s youth. He is outgoing, a prankster, high social standing, comes from money, has a car, and campaigns for Santa Cruz autonomy.
I don’t wish to say that Jorge’s choice to sing a traditional song was mean-spirited and insulting, in fact, all Bolivians know traditional Bolivian music and it is obvious national pride is important. However, his choice to sing the traditional song was half clever and half pompous prank. It was pushing the envelope of politically correct, but this is more of a Western concept anyway.
So, when traditional wind instruments started playing over the speakers, the room turned to find the person with the mic and could not help but laugh to see Jorge with a fat grin on his face singing away, high-pitched whooping and all.

Because it was my birthday it was my duty to sing for the team. I chose Stevie Wonder’s “I just called to say I love you” –certain to be a success. Boy would it have been great if I had not lost my voice playing BINGO with the kids that day. I opened my mouth to sing and not even a squeak came out. The microphone was quickly passed to my understudy: a slick Bolivian chain-smoker (think nasty and you’ll only be half way there). He took over my gig and in 4 brief, scarring minutes ruined my favorite song forever. I did not know whether to laugh or cry on account of being embarrassed and because his English accent sounded like mix between crooner Frank Sinatra and a deaf catfish. Not only that but somehow the singer was looking at me like it was sung to me, both in my place and in my honor.

Women and Pains

In order to get to the Maternity ward at the General Hospital in Montero you walk down a corridor past the nurses stand and take a right; rather than a left which takes you to the morgue and a dining hall facility (perhaps an administrator’s oversight?)

The day that I first went to visit Katie at the hospital I was anxious to find her. Katie had been hospitalized the night before because she was spiking fevers and complained of deep bone pain; the diagnosis- Dengue Fever. Dengue Fever is also referred to as bone-breaking disease to give some idea about the level of discomfort. Given the unparalleled amounts of rain this season so far in Montero, the mosquitoes have quite a haven for beloved offspring/little vectors for diseases such as Dengue.

Katie is a tough, so the fact that she was hospitalized made me nervous and eager to find her—which was not hard because nearly everyone was able to tell me what area and what room the “gringa” was in.
Immediately after we found her we were told to leave the room for bug fumigation.

“Bug Fumigation?!” I responded hoping that I’ve heard someone wrong, but sure enough a man with a mask and a fumigation backpack was at the door to be let in. How come HE gets a mask?

“Don’t worry”, the nurse says to me he’s only doing it in the bathroom.

“You can’t fumigate the room of a pregnant woman with Dengue, that’s ridiculous” I say, “I mean you might as well offer her beer, don’t you think that will also help her baby”, I say and immediately realize I am foolish and that I will, from now on, be pegged as Katie’s obnoxious, hot-headed Gringa friend.

We leave the room and walking past the open windows without screens makes me livid that Katie is enduring the discomfort of moving down the hall with her IV bag and later will be exposed to the nasty fumigation smell because of someone’s misguided notion that fumigation is a better solution than putting screens on the windows. We walk down the hall to be herded into the one room at the back of the Maternity Ward, with no fan.

Stepping into the room it felt like slow motion as my naïve eyes grew wide peering around the room at all the women, laid in their cots with new, new babies by their side. What most stuck out to me was the look in their eyes. Their eyes, some of them young were heavy and expressive with a mysterious mix of stern, but calm, suffering and disinterest. And there I was looking on them, probably it was rude, but I was numb with awe for the way these women had all shared this shared experience, suffering and all. And now it looked to have shaped their eyes in the same knowing, heavy way and I had no way to relate to such a thing.

Later in the hall there was another woman with a big, round belly leaning on the brick wall as she walked, breathed out her discomfort in short puffs. “Why is she walking? Why isn’t she in a bed?” I asked my friend María.

“Honey, at that point you don’t want to sit, you don’t want to lie, you just need to walk until the baby starts coming out.” She went on to say that her sister thinks birth is the most natural of things and that she agrees, but that there is nothing natural about the level of a mother suffers to birth her baby.

It’s only recently in working with Katie that I have learned anything about pregnancy: pre-natal pills, folic acid needs, first trimester nausea, urgent food preferences, 8:30 bed times, expansion of pelvic girdle and subsequent pain, etc. I also know that in fourteen weeks gestation period that the pictures of the baby have changed showing that the little bugger has grown from looking like a snake with a short tail to a bird with flappy wings.

It’s never really been in my radar, but it finally seems more relevant when Katie, at 27, is someone that I’ve felt so natural relating with, especially compared with Bolivians. After all with her Midwest upbringing, the same Asics running shoes, study abroad experience in Spain, volunteer with World Teach program in Ecuador (where I am registered to be next September) and when we talk there are too many “I know exactly what you mean” moments for me to not accepting ideas of divine intervention or at least that our meeting is a bizarre, wonderful coincidence.

NOTE: Dad, please know that in this entry is on my ruminations of women and pangs of childbirth which distinct from me being or having immediate desires to be pregnant. Rest assured this is still a long time off.

Little Evelin

(This picture is unrelated to the story below, but its a good shot to capture the "aguayu" or traditional textile that women from the altiplano wear for carrying around just about anything...kids, chickens, sugar cane, pigs, etc.)

One similarity of families at our Comedor is that the youngest child in a family is the most smiley and cheery of the bunch; little Evelin who comes to the Apoyo Escolar in the afternoon is no different. While shy at first, Evelin is a sweetheart with bubbling energy and smiles, but it turns out she's more of a “bruiser” than the little dresses she wears let on.

In general, the youngest of the family are, in a way, innocent to the harsh reality of their situations. While childhood innocence might seem normal of children in general, my experience with these kids has been that dealing with difficult and explicit themes happens abruptly and early on. Today, while the older siblings and parents are stressing to bail water out of their houses and cringing at the sight of more rain- the littlest kids are out swimming in the street that is now their river-- attempting to catch snakes and frogs.

Nope, there’s no such G-rating system on movies here. That nonsense limits a child’s exposure, and exposure is better than protection, so that reality doesn't catch kids off-guard. That said, older siblings take the brunt of household chores, care for siblings and consequently they wear on their young faces expressions heavier than their years; the financial and other related stresses that are but facts of life. The littlest children are blessed with extra support from siblings and are looked upon by their family with an expression that is almost nostaliga and appreciateion for such young innocence.

So, today I was helping Evelin to practice writing her numbers today when we came to the number eight or “ocho”. “OCHO” she yells. “Yup”, I say. “OCHO”, she says again, this time up in my face and with more conviction. I’m pretty confused why all of a sudden she’s stoaked about writing her numbers, but always happy when the kids have “normal kid” moments of just being silly, so…well I run with it because I’m their CRAZY gringa teacher and if I'm only good for one thing it is relating with my students by making myself look like a raging idiot.

“OCHO”, I bark back at her and she echos back louder. Then somehow the word "ocho" changed from a number, then to a dog barking, next to a racist imitation of an old Chinese man, and later to a sneezing sound. Evelin’s favorite was the sneeze so she ran with it and this went on for sometime. I sneezed big and she sneezed even bigger. I would attempt to look more and more foolish and Evelin continued to copy.

And then the sneeze got too big.

Evelin drew her head back, gained momentum and smacked her head against the table on the way down, taking a sizeable bite out of her lip at the time of contact with the little table. When she lifted her head back up I didn’t know what face to make. My first thought was to freak out and check if she was missing teeth, but I remembered that my sister says to never act scared or the kid will mirror that emotion. My next thought was to laugh hysterically and the fact that the number eight escalated such excitement in the two of us to bring us to this moment and brutal collision with the table, and then that made me think of all those times you were reprimanded in school by teachers who said, “sure, its all fun until someone pokes their eye out”.

When Evelin brought her head back up her face looked startled at first and just as she was about to begin giggling her features morphed, got heavy and changed to expressions of pain and her lip started gushing blood from two teeth-marked places.

I swept her up into my arms and ran to the bathroom to apply direct pressure and rinse her mouth out when I met my boss, Pennye, (who is here visiting from the States) en route to the bathroom. Obviously this incident was not a big deal, but given my track record this week it didn't look to good. Pennye layed into me a bit after having heard a previous child abuse incident just days before involving me cuddling and tickling a little boy in my lap who had an unfortunate hole in the crotch of his shorts with his little member sticking out- inches away from my hands.

All told I still have my job, but it’s been recommended that I go and confess my sins this weekend.