January 18, 2017
Walking Down the Street
This is one of my early observations of Bolivia. I don’t think I had been there for two weeks when I wrote this. After five months in Bolivia, my opinions have evolved. When I asked friends what I should write about, I was told they wanted my observations; what I really think when I’m walking down the street. So this blog is about sidewalks in Santa Cruz and how people act walking down the street. The things here are very different than back home.
First of all, they have sidewalks. My friends in Kaufman know that a house or
two might have sidewalks, but overall there are none. And my friends and family, in Bristol know
that sidewalks don’t exist. Santa Cruz
has sidewalks.
The sidewalks in my part of town are
uneven. I live in the older part of
town, just past the First Ring and close to the Colonial old part of town. In this part of town, the curbs tend to be
rather high; I assume this was so rain water, during the rainy season, would
not flood houses. Walking down a road
for some blocks you might encounter a dozen different styles of sidewalk, as
well as broken concrete. Some people
want the entrance to their house to look nice, so they put down tile; that can
be a challenge on a rainy day.
The second thing is how people act when you
cross their paths. The way I was raised
is that men give the path to women, the elderly, and the infirm. That’s not the way it is done here. I have had two or three young men step in
front of me, with the expectation I move out of the way, or blocking the path
so I have to step in the street. I have
also seen people look at me from a shop door, see me coming, and step in the
path, again wanting me to take a different path. Stepping in front of people happens all the
time. I don’t see people giving way for
the elderly or infirm. Drivers are
worse; they don’t slow down for pedestrians.
Here it seems to be the strongest goes first. I swear it seems that cars will speed up to
make me run across the street, even if I have the green light!
Those were my first observations. After being in Bolivia for several months, I
saw things were different than my first observations. In Samaipata, a mountain town, there is very
little traffic, so walking in the streets is easy. In Tarija, I was surprised when drivers
waited for me to cross the street. Sucre
was a busy city with decent sidewalks. I
never had problems crossing the street there.
My conclusion is that Santa Cruz is like a boom town. Everything is fast and furious. That means drivers are rushing through the
city. I’ve seen taxi drivers that looked
like they would explode over the slightest provocation. Visiting the rest of Bolivia has helped me
understand the character of Santa Cruz.
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