Day 103 - Bolivian Spring

Bolivian Spring

Bolivia is in the Southern Hemisphere.  That means they have opposite seasons of the United States.  So October is spring.  But that does not mean what we in the United States think.

Bolivian winter is more like our spring time.  There are warm days, followed by cold days.  Most days though are nice.

Spring time in Santa Cruz, Bolivia includes the hottest months of the year.  There are many days of intense heat, low to mid 90s.  This is typical of the months of October, November, and December.  I have been told November is the hottest month.  I looked at record temperatures in Santa Cruz, Bolivia and the record is 100.  Apparently, that is rare.  So far, the first half of October hasn't been so bad, but I'm not looking forward to the scorching days of November.

Find a shady tree or walk on the shady side of the street and you are fine.  There are often breezes and the sun sets around 6:30, cooling the world.  Nights are usually nice. Open the widows and enjoy the breeze.

As always, spring is a time of flowers blooming.  That is mostly what I wanted to share with you, the beautiful blooming trees and flowers of Santa Cruz, Bolivia.

Day 100 - Keeping In Touch with Home

Keeping in Touch with Home

I don't normally post on Saturdays, but because this is day 100, I thought it would be ok.  Can you believe I have been here 100 days?

Have I mentioned before that this is my second time to live in Santa Cruz, Bolivia?  Well, in the 1980s, I joined the Assemblies of God to work here as a teacher.  Because of obscure rules they had I was restricted to two years.  South America Mission (SAM) was quick to invite me to join them.  I stayed another three years with SAM mission.  Though I am not a SAM missionary now, they will always be a part of  me.

Communication was very different in the 80s compared today.  It was limited to phone and letters.  The Internet did not exist back then.

If I wanted to make a call back home, I had to call the operator in La Paz.  I would give her the number; it was always a woman and I think the same one each time.  She would tell me to wait by the phone until she put the call through.  That might take ten minutes, but more likely four hours.  I would get a call back and ask the person on the other side to call me.  It was too expensive to call from Bolivia and much cheaper from the US.  A few minutes later, I would get a call back and we could talk for a just a few minutes because it was also expensive to call from the States, just cheaper than Bolivia.

The other method of communication was letters.  Often I sat home at night writing letters to family and friends.  I also sent out a mission newsletter about once a month to those who financially supported me, and to family, even if they did not.  I would get letters from home too, though sometimes not with a lot of frequency.  During my second year here, there was a postal strike.  I doubt any of my letters got home.  One day in February I sat down with a pile of letters from home.  I put them in order from oldest to most recent and spent a Saturday afternoon reading news from home.  Even with letters nobody told me my sister-in-law Jackie was going to have a baby.  I found out about three weeks before Katie was born.

The year 2016 is very different from 1989.  The Internet rules.  Everybody has Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp, or whatever is the latest means of communication.  I post pictures on Instagram or a blog on Facebook and I get almost instantaneous responses from family and friends.  I know what my little nieces and nephews are doing almost every day because their moms post a lot.  I know what my friends from Nash or Bristol Baptist are doing because of their posts.  I am up-to-date on the contentious election of 2016 and see the funny stories and videos everyone else sees.

My mom was worried that she would lose contact with me.  Yet we chat on Facebook Messenger half a dozen times a day.  I even know what she is eating.  That is how up-to-date we are in this age. 

I know some people complain about social media.  To me, it is my connection with home.  I think it is a great thing in this crazy modern world.  So keep sending pics of your new haircut or your cousin’s baby.  I don’t mind the pictures of your cow, dog, horse, or cat.  I love all the back to school pictures.  I love the funny stories and memes.  Keep up the contact.

Love you

Day 99 - The Madre India

The Madre India

I wanted to start sharing with you some of the tidbits of history that make a place come alive.  In Santa Cruz that means the statues.  I have no idea how many statues are in this city.  Every plaza has one and the rotundas on the rings have them too.  Some are in front of churches or in quiet little parks or shady avenues.  They are everywhere.  As I talk to people I discover they have histories behind them.  So if I am going to discover the wealth of knowledge of this beautiful city, I need to seek out the statues. 

One of my favorite statues in Santa Cruz is the Madre India.  To me it looks like a giant waking up with her child in her arms and suddenly seeing the raging traffic of Santa Cruz.  It is so fittingly placed!

With a little research I found the story behind the statue.  There are really two stories.

First, during the War of Independence, the women of Cochabamba defended their city and homes on San Sebastian Hill.  Wars often only talk about heroes, but wars invade the private lives of ordinary people, like the brave women of Cochabamba, who died for their home. 

The Santa Cruz mayor, Fernando Sattori, in 1978 decided to pay homage to these women by commissioning the building of a statue.  A young sculptor, David Paz Ramos, was commissioned to complete the statue.  But he was not sure how to express the emotions of the women defending their homes.

One day he was riding his noisy motorcycle past the Cathedral.  Lately Ayore migrants had been living along the side of the Cathedral, unable to find any other place to live.  As he sped by, he noticed one woman, protectively, and angrily, holding her child who was scared by the noise of the unfamiliar motorcycle.  She would fight to the death to protect her child.  The image shocked the sculptor, but he realized this was his statue.

Four months later, the image was unveiled on the intersection of the Second Ring and Avenida Argentina.  She is still there and still protecting her child.

It is stories like this that make Santa Cruz come alive for me.

Translated and adapted from an article on stcrzysustradiciones.blogspot.com

If you haven't read my first novel yet, I invite you to give it a try.  I'd love your feedback.
Spartan Sisters

Day 98 - A Rainy Saturday

Rainy Saturday

After an entire week of running a fever, I woke up this Saturday morning feeling ok.  Sometime during the night my fever broke.  So I felt I needed to get out of the house.  Only problem is that I also woke up to a steady rain.

I have had plans for a few weeks to get up early one Saturday morning and take pictures for some upcoming blogs.  I am doing ones for the Chiriguano statue, the Madre India statue, the Cañoto Statue, the Avion Pirata, and the cemetery.  That would mean that I would need to walk the First Ring again.  I could stay home and grade papers and make lesson plans, and then later write some of my new novel, but the green was calling me.  So I took a shower and got out of the house by 9:00.

It was raining outside, not heavy, just a light steady rain.  I stopped at the ATM next door, because I had just a few dollars in cash, then crossed the Plaza Blacut.  I took the picture you see below of the reflections in the rain puddles.  It was not hot, but steamy.  The humidity was 100% at least!  So an old guy like me was quickly covered in sweat.

I stopped for a few minutes at the Starbucks for a white mocha coffee; I forgot what we call it in English.  I also ordered a cuñapé, the delicious little cheese rolls we have here. Looking out on Avenida Velarde, I could see more rain.  For a few minutes it was heavy.  In places it was flooding the street.  I watched a car hydroplane, but that never slows them down.  I saw a lady get drenched as a car went by.  Drivers here are aggressive.  A little gnat was bothering me.  He really wanted to make his home in my eye, so I decided it was time to brave the rain.

I walked through my barrio to get to Avenida las Americas, so I was close to the Madre India.  Away from traffic, the little barrio was so peaceful.  Flowers blooming in profusion.  The light dripping of the rain.  The scents of jasmine and someone’s breakfast.  I could live in this barrio forever. 

Soon I was at the Madre India.  With the gray skies, I am not sure how my pictures will look.  I might  need to return one hot afternoon when the sun is just right.  But in the next few days you will see a blog on the history of the Madre India.

The rain was too heavy and I had too far to go, so I took a taxi to the cemetery.  I don’t know what you think of cemeteries, but to me they are not creepy.  They are an expression of the culture in a vivid way.  It speaks of death, yes, but also the love between families.  The Santa Cruz Cemetery is one of the most beautiful little parks in this city.  And it is quiet!  It is on the busy First Ring, but it is so quiet you can hear your footsteps.

Still with more rain, I took another taxi to the Avion Pirata.  There is an interesting story why an airplane is in the middle of the city.  You’ll just have to wait for my upcoming blog.  I took a trufi to the Cañoto statue.  A trufi is like a taxi, but they take multiple passengers and go on a specified route.  This one just goes around the First Ring and it costs like $0.25.  Besides, the Cañoto statue is half the First Ring away. 

I have already written blogs on the Madre India, Cañoto, and Avion Pirata.  I just needed some pictures.  I haven’t written a blog on the cemetery yet, but will after I finish this one. 

I cut through town to walk by the Plaza and look for a museum I had heard about.  I saw the windows, but a lady let me in to see it is just a very pretty building in rubble.  So I walked on home, stopping by Teconté for some lunch, and here I am now, finishing this blog.

Hope your Saturday was beautiful.  I know October in Texas can be incredibly gorgeous.

Day 97 - Samaipata's Inca Ruins

Samaipata’s Inca Ruins

From the little archaeological museum in Samaipata, you discover that this town was founded by the Chané Tribe nearly 2,000 years ago.

The Chané were a peaceful people that grew corn and peanuts.  They made beautifully designed pottery with intricate designs.  They built a temple on the highest point of Samaipata and carved into the rock intricate designs of animals.  Their town surrounded the rock.

Today that rock is inaccurately named “El Fuerte de Samaipata,” or the Fort of Samaipata.  It was more accurately a temple.  In the late 1400s the Inca conquered the people of Samaipata and from here led forays into the plains of what is now Santa Cruz.  They were unable to defeat the Guarani, and were in fact, chased away by them, probably just a few years before the Spanish arrived.  Smallpox arrived with the Spanish and wiped out the Guarani; so the tribe can still claim they were never conquered.

The carved rock of el Fuerte

To visit the ruins, you first visit the archaeological museum in town and pay for a ticket.  As a foreigner, without my worker’s visa completed, I had to pay 50 Bs.  It sounds expensive, but that is only $7.  I pay $10 for a visit to the Nasher or Butterfly Gardens in Dallas, or $12 for a movie.  S0 $7 does not seem so bad.  We walked around the small museum that had objects dug up from the area, some as old as 2000 years ago.

Fernando then drove us up the twisting and winding roads to finally arrive at the Fuerte.  That isn’t where our journey ended.  We had to trek up the mountain.  Rebecca’s first grade son, Matias, and I stayed a little ahead of the group.  I did not want to stop and rest, afraid I would be unable to make it the whole way up to the top if I stopped.  Keeping up with a first grader was a good way not to stop.  The views were incredible, but Matias didn’t care about the views, only if he could make a good echo or find blackberries.  He was successful in both.

Because people in the past wrote graffiti or carved their names in the rocks, visitors can no longer climb the rock.  Viewing stands have been constructed to get a look at them.  You might not be able to make out from my pictures, but there are intricate carvings of a snake, a running animal, and a curled up jaguar.

There are more excavations of the ancient town in several places along the trek.  When we had finished about 90% of the trek, Fernando showed me an app on his phone showing how far we had walked.  We basically walked a 7K race, but up and down hills.  Thirty-six hours later, my feet are sore and swollen.

Would I do it again?  Most definitely.

Some information adapted from Wikipedia.com

I invite you to read my first novel, The Spartan Sisters, based on the Trojan War

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Day 96 - Viva Santa Cruz

Viva Santa Cruz

Santa Cruz has its own song.  I never forgot it when I went back to the States in 1989.  As my Spanish faded, some of the words faded, but never completely.  Returning in 2016, many of the words have come back. 

Viva santa cruz
bella tierra de mi corazón
Tienes la virtud

y el perfume de la inspiración

En tu cielo azul
las estrellas hablan del amor
Noches de pasión
cuando me enamora Santa Cruz

Cuando me vaya hay amorcito e de partir llorando
Viva Santa Cruz QUE VIVA !!
Viva Santa Cruz QUE VIVA !!
Cuando me vaya hay amorcito e de partir llorando
Viva Santa Cruz QUE VIVA!!
Viva Santa Cruz QUE VIVA!!

A la luz de la luna
yo quiero hablarte con el corazón
Y decirte te amo
dulce cambita flor de Santa Cruz

Long Live Santa Cruz

Long Live Santa Cruz
beautiful land of my heart
You have the virtue
and the perfume of inspiration

In your blue sky
the stars speak of love
Nights of passion
when I love Santa Cruz

When I leave there, I leave crying, my love
Long live Santa Cruz!  Viva!!
Long live Santa Cruz!  Viva!!

When I leave there, I leave crying, my love
Long live Santa Cruz!  Viva!!
Long live Santa Cruz!  Viva!!


To the light of the Moon
I want to talk with the heart
And tell you I love you
Cambita, sweet flower Santa Cruz

Here is a link to the song:
Viva Santa Cruz

A Camba/cambita is someone from Santa Cruz.  There is probably more meaning to that.  Someone who reads this who knows, will most likely tell me.

One of my students asked me the other day if I would like some music to listen to over the weekend.  He sent me this song and several other Bolivian songs.  I told him I loved this song and it was in my heart, though probably never like it was in his, someone with it in his blood.  His response was the Camba is born wherever, but you have already crossed the Pirai (the river here in the city). 

I wrote this blog to let those of you far away from here how much people from Santa Cruz love Santa Cruz, including me.  It enters your heart and won’t go away.  It’s the little things like the food or a favorite street.  It is the big things like the Plaza or a game between Oriente and Blooming.  It is jasmine on a warm night.  It is the friends who are as close as family.  It is coffee and cuñapé for breakfast. 

I am always a Texan, but I am also a Camba.  I can’t separate the two.

Day 95 - Samaipata

Samaipata

I know it is a week late, but there has been so much going on that I am slow to get this blog to you.  But it is with great pleasure I want to introduce you to Samaipata and tell you about my weekend visit with the family of Fernando and Mariela.  I already posted about our weekend together, but you need to see a few pictures of this little town.

In Quechua, the language of the Incas and still spoken throughout the Andes, samay means rest and pata means an elevated place on a shore.  So Samaipata is an elevated place of rest along a shore.  It was the site of the furthest eastward expansion of the Incas.  From the fort here, they tried unsuccessfully to conquer the Guarani in the area of Santa Cruz.  I will give a bit more history when I tell the story of the ruins in an upcoming blog.

Fernando and Mariela live just two blocks from the plaza.  The streets surrounding the plaza are mostly cobble-stone and surrounded by the traditional type of houses you find in eastern Bolivia.  There are also many that are very old, even back to colonial times.

The plaza of Samaipata is probably half the size of the main plaza in Santa Cruz, but has much more artwork, mostly statues.  From the ones I am posting, you can see that some are like the plazas and rotundas everywhere in Bolivia, imposing historical statues of heroes of the past.  But Samaipata has about a dozen small carvings that are easily described as “different.”  There is a frog, women that look like they are emerging from an egg, or a man in the mouth of a snake.  In the very middle, instead of a statue of a hero, is a sundial.  Blooming trees surrounded the plaza.

We walked around a little bit on Saturday afternoon looking for some local honey, which we never found.  We did encounter the public library with drawings of “The Little Prince.”  We walked through the market, which is more comparable to a stall at the Ramada, and a lot cleaner. 

Before I headed back to Santa Cruz because of a special service at church the next day, Fernando and Mariela took me to the Pueblito, a reconstructed Bolivian village.  It was a imaginative view of what a colonial village would look like, complete with church, plaza, and shops of all kinds surrounding the plaza.

If I had the money to build a little house here, I would do it.  I could imagine myself living in this quiet, little town, with the perfect weather.  I would have a garden of roses, morning glories, jasmine, daisies, lavender, and rosemary, just for the beauty of the flowers.  I would try to grow a fruit tree or two, or maybe a grape vine, and a few vegetables. I’d get up late, but write half of the day before going on an afternoon hike. At night, in this place far from city lights, I’d look at the beauty of the Southern Cross and the sweep of the Milky Way behind it.

If you ever visit me in Santa Cruz, we will take the two hour journey to the mountains to stay here for a few days.  You will not want to go home.  Yes, Samaipata is just that beautiful.

Here is a link to my first novel.  I need a few of you to buy it and recommend it on Amazon. 
The Spartan Sisters