A Day In Cochabamba

An average day in my Cochabamba life:

Today I set my alarm for 7am, but was so tired and snoozed until the last possible second that I could get out of bed and still make it on time to work at 8:30. I try to walk a different route to work every morning to see the side streets of my neighborhood. This morning, since I was running late, I decided to take a bus. But I took the 208 instead of the 203 (signs are easily confused) and ended up somewhere completely different at about 8:45. I ended up taking a cab to work from I don't know where exactly. The truffis thwart me again!

In the morning, I worked on the packet I am creating as part of my Gender Identity Awareness Campaign. At 11, I went with my main-man (slash boss) Oscar to the main plaza to film some general B roll of the plaza for my documentary.

Sarah's host family invited me over for lunch, so I went to their house at about 12:30. The house is quite the spectacle. The design is really fascinating-- all of the rooms (bedrooms, kitchen etc.) open up into a big court yard that is covered in overgrown greenery and is also a storage space for a host of items including: old TVs, a stove, huge amounts of scrap metal, endless parts of furniture, really interesting artwork, and parrots. The family is incredibly nice and they joke with me a lot. We were not two seconds into lunch before the brothers (who are all in their 30s) started harping on me for not eating spicy food, then poured me a shot of some fermented alcohol that tasted like a mix of wine and four loko, then told me the best way to cook cow intestines. THEN they brought out the kittens.

There are so many animals in that house! The parrots, the kittens, the dogs, the two year old!

Moving along-- After my kitty snuggle session, I went back to work and edited some of the footage I have shot so far. After work I walked home, realized when I got home that my key to one of our locks was completely mangled, so I battled with the lock for about 15 minutes and finally got in the house. Next, I went to the gym and hit my record running of 25 minutes (It's HARD to run in this altitude, OK?) and lifted weights.

The truffi I needed to take to the FSD office wasn't coming, so I started walking. Surprisingly, I don't feel unsafe in Cochabamba at 9pm. At least not in the northern parts. I did, however, sprint across the bridge between the gym and the office because the Cleferos (glue sniffers) hang out under the bridge and are just itching to steal my iphone.

Lastly, I traversed to an Irish pub with Annie and Manuela to eat guacamole with french fries (go figure, everything here is served with potatoes. EVERYTHING) and drink a beer. I left smelling like smoke because every single person in Cochabamba smokes.

Tomorrow? Back to work! Saturday, going to a campo with Manuela to help her with a dental hygiene workshop. Sunday? Futbol!

Personal Growth

I have been in Bolivia for exactly one month. I feel like right now I am at a volatile point in this journey; the make-it or break-it point. I turned in my grant proposal, my project is solidified, and I'm knee deep in the production phase of my documentary.

When I am not working on my project, things are pretty slow at work, though, and I have an awful lot of time to think. Being alone with myself has never been a strong point for me. In San Francisco, I surround myself with people and projects and busyness constantly– and not by accident. I have never been the type of person who does well spending too much time in his own head. But being here in Cochabamba has kind of forced me to confront the side of myself that doesn't want to get too friendly with my sub conscious. Because my work here is essentially a solo project, I am alone pretty often. I hesitate to use the term "lonely" because being without other people does not mean one has to be lonely. What I am learning is that company can be found in a great variety of things, both internal and external. It doesn't have to be in the shape of close friends and family. It could be the person sitting next to you on the bus, or the kids playing at the playground you walk past on your way to work.

This sense of perspective is slowly inching its way into my mindset and it feels very liberating. When I interviewed a Trans activist yesterday, I heard detailed accounts of the lives of transsexual sex workers in Cochabamba. The lives of these people are packed full with violence, discrimination, and exploitation. I feel like throughout the interview I was battling with myself. When things got too real, too hard to handle, I would start to disassociate in a sense. I would think about my life in San Francisco and that my time here in Cochabamba is really just a short trip and I am not related to these people and don't have relationships with the person looking back at me through a camera lens. But then another part of me, the part of me I was trying to embrace, was letting myself feel that my experience in that exact moment was fully real and my relationship and connection to this woman was as real as my relationships with the people closest to me back in states. This sense of immersion was cropping up, even though my immediate mental reaction was to suppress it.

What I am learning here in Cochabamba has little to do with grant writing or NGO operation. Instead, I am learning a lot about patience, self-acceptance, and uncertainty. And more than that, being OK with being patient, being OK with myself, and being OK with daily uncertainty.

Unrelated, I went to a documentary screening at an arts center this evening of a film about the Sex Pistols. How strange to experience that in Cochabamba!

Pride and Progress

This blog is a bit off-topic and not inherently related to my time in Bolivia. However, today is a really big day back in the states! This afternoon a film I made last fall Social Notworking (Watch Here) is screening at a student film festival in Hollywood. Luckily, my awesome friend/assistant director/screen writer Vicki and our stupendous leading actress Dana are able to attend the festival since I cannot! Additionally, Dana is up for the Best Actress award at the festival. I'm so proud of our team and I hope everyone who reads this is sending good vibes their way!

Secondly, this weekend is Pride in San Francisco and it's the first time since I moved to San Francisco that I have not attended. Thinking about the Pride festivities makes me really reflect on the status of human, social, and civil rights around the world. Living in San Francisco can be such a bubble of acceptance and tolerance. Sometimes I forget to appreciate the beauty of the San Francisco community and the luck I have experienced in being able to live there.

Here in Cochabamba I see the huge disparity in rights between the queer community and the cis-gender, heterosexual community. In Uganda, people are being killed for being Gay. In most of Latin America, there is no word for 'heteronormativity' because there is nothing to oppose it. It's hard to define something when it appears to be part of the very fabric of our being.

I was watching Harvey Milk's Hope Speech today and feeling very inspired. Because I do have hope. I have a lot of hope for the future of Latin America and the ability for tolerance and respect to develop. I have hope that marriage equality will become a reality in the United States. I have hope that every year, fewer and fewer gay youth will commit suicide, until finally, a year goes by where no gay youth commit suicide. We are not there, yet, though. Suicide is a reality, hate crimes are a reality, and second class citizenship is a reality in 2012.

I hope, though, that I am contributing to making 2013 a year of progress.

Happy Pride <3

Evo.

I just returned from a meeting with my boss and, somehow, she has approved my project! I just finished a draft of my grant for funding for distribution of the project and titled it the Gender Identity Awareness Project. It will be completed in two parts. First, a short documentary about the experience of Trans individuals in Cochabamba in the realms of health care, human rights, and social stigma. Second, I will be creating an information packet about Trans identities that will be distributed both with the film and as a separate entity.

I am Stoked. 

Moving along...

Have you ever thought to yourself, "What the hell is the deal with Evo Morales?" Probably not, I guess. However, it's been a common thought in my head lately. Evo Morales is the President of Bolivia. He is a member of the MAS (essentially "socialist movement"). He didn't go to college. He is from the campo and identifies with indigenous communities (although he is not actually Indigenous). And debate over his presidency runs fiercer and deeper, and splayed with more propoganda, than the U.S. debates over George W. Bush.

It seems like every single person in Cochabamba has an extremely strong opinion about Evo and there are only two opinions to pick from: Love him or Hate him. Pretty much all of the host families that FSD interns are staying with hate Evo with a burning passion. Their explainations vary. For my host family specifically, they are disgusted by Evo because of his complete lack of education and insight. They talk often about how he offers incentives to campesinos who will march to Cochabamba or La Paz or any given cause and show him support. He will do things like build a soccer stadium or give a bunch of bread to the campo if all of the residents march. What he doesn't do, however, is increase infrastructure, find a way to get water to the campos, or invest in long-term development. For my host family, this is a problem. Other people seem to strongly dislike him for more anti-indigenous sentiments, and still others because he hurts international business opportunities.

However, when I drive out to rural areas with IDH for our sexual health workshops, the dirt roads are lined with spray painted Pro-Evo signage. The campesinos seem to love him. I can't figure out if it is because of lack of education and blind faith in the government that claims to be "pro-campo" or if he has actually helped the campos' standard of living increase. 

Before coming to Bolivia, I felt like I had read a lot about Evo's government and felt somewhat in favor of his regime change from his neoliberal predecessors. But now, all of that is in question. Poverty has not reduced in Bolivia during Evo's Presidency (since 2006), laws have been cohersively made to extend Evo's term in office, in fact my host family told me flat out that they don't know when the next election in Bolivia might be held. Additonally, Evo publicly stated that he thinks that eating chicken causes homosexuality. I have a serious problem with this.

But rather than assert my own views about his policies, I find it more fascinating to observe the country in a state of such political angst. The wealthier, city-dwellers seem almost hopeless in their discussion of Evo, my host family talks more of emigrating from Bolivia than actually fighting against Evo's administration. Additionally, the campos are so covered with Evo paraphenalia that it seems almost contrived. Is Evo a populist? A narcissist? Intentionally deceitful or filled with positive intentions? I'm not sure if I will ever really know.

Trans* and Transportation

Yesterday, I met with a woman named Rayza who is MTF and currently fighting for her legal name change in Cochabamba (it's not legal anywhere in Bolivia). I met with her to discuss the documentary I am creating about the Trans community. I want her to be my main story line because she is the biggest activist here in Cochabamba and is really well known in the community. She reviewed my proposal and was very interested and willing to help. Some of the things she talked about as far as the Trans community goes:

• It is much safer in Cochabamba to be FTM than MTF because of the machismo attitudes of most men. There is much more likely to be violence against a person intentionally not displaying their masculinity.
• Her biggest goal for the documentary was to expose the difference between what I think is essentially "drag" culture (or what she called "transformativos") and people who identify as transsexual or transgender. She explained that the general population of Bolivia tends to think that people who are Trans are people who decide to "cross-dress," but that they population doesn't have any understanding of actual trans identities-- i.e. People who were born into bodies that do not fit their emotional or mental identity. 
• The biggest legal fight right now for the Trans community is to legalize name changes for Trans people. This is even more difficult in Bolivia, however, because of the issue of lack of documentation for much of the population. A lot of people don't have identity cards/birth certificates/etc. to begin with. The second fight is to promote inclusive policies in the work place to ensure that no one is fired from their job based on gender identity.

On a different note, I took some (not that good) pictures of the various kinds of transportation I take yesterday. 

A "Micro" bus w/ a set route around the city. You hail the bus from the side of the street and hopes it stops for you! 1.70bs/ride

The white car is a "Taxi," but a sketch one. A lot of cars but a sticker that says Taxi on their windshield, but they are not actually part of a company or anything.

The front end of a Truffi bus. A VW-esque van with extra seats. It drives a set route and you also hail it from the sidewalk. Normally they are PACKED.

Sexualidad.

Part 1

About a week ago, I had a long talk with my host mom about my gender identity. After she had heard my friends calling me 'Lucas,' there were some questions, I think, that needed to be sorted out. For the first week here, my family was calling me "Laura" because that is my birth-name and is, thus, written on all of my documentation. I was really nervous about having this talk because, although I like my host family, I really don't know them that well and did not know how they would react. Talking about my gender identity even in the States makes me nervous enough.

I told her that I wanted to talk to her and she was very receptive. I explained that I knew she had heard my friends call me a different name and that in the States I identify as something different. Her response was awesome. She said she was confused, but also really open to whatever I identified as. She asked if I wanted her to use male pronouns and call me Lucas and I said yes. She asked some questions and I tried to explain the best I could in Spanish. All in all it went really well. Everyone in the family calls me Lucas now and uses male pronouns and I am just really surprised and relieved by how amazing they have treated me.

In the last week, I feel like I have been able to adjust so much better to living in Cochabamba. I am a lot more open to my family and much more comfortable around the house. So much has changed just from that talk. Realizing this has made me reflect a lot on my life outside of Bolivia. I think so much of me has been lost and hidden previous to accepting my gender identity. Not until the last few months have I really been able to feel like a real person and I think that change has been reflected in almost all of my relationships with other people and with myself. Being here in Bolivia is certainly opening windows into parts of myself that I had been ignoring for a long time.

Part 2


Several days this week I have accompanied my host organization (Institute for Human Development) to various middle schools in rural parts of Cochabamba to present sexual health work shops. These workshops are fascinating. The first day, I walked into a room in a middle school about 40 minutes outside of Cochabamba proper and all of the 11-year-old girls started screaming (I passed pretty well as a boy that day). The workshops include discussion about what is sex, changes to bodies during puberty, and when and how healthy relationships function. The IDH staff does an amazing job of making the kids comfortable with the subject and being both professional and friendly.

Sex Ed - Complete with puppets and costumes!

Typical Middle School Classroom

On the way to one of the Campos, the neighborhoods were lined with pro-Evo graffiti and advertisements. Exactly the opposite of the city. 

Some of my reflections on the workshops are:

• 11-year-olds in the rural outskirts of Cochabamba are receiving more sex education than I ever had in a suburban city in the United States. 
• The workshops are entirely heteronormative. IDH's mission relates to prevention of AIDS/HIV which, obviously, is transmittable through more than heterosexual sex. So, it's unfortunate that there isn't at least some discussion of the various kinds of sexual activity. Sexual identity is defined as "male" or "female" which, again, is unfortunate for any kid like me sitting in the class who probably hears that and feels more like shit about themselves than they did before IDH showed up *sigh*
• Every session always includes some kid asking if I am a boy or a girl. Normally I answer by saying, "I identify as a boy" and leaving it at that. But today one of the kids asked an IDH staff member and he said I was a girl. I decided I might as well do some education for everyone involved and jumped in and said, "No, yo identifico como un chico. Entonces, usa él y los pronombres masculinas." Surprisingly, the kids were super receptive. They barely blinked an eye and continued on with their conversations. The other staff member however seemed pretty confused (even though I introduced myself as Lucas originally and use only masculine adjectives to describe myself) and even showed me to the girls' bathroom when I asked where the bathroom was (which I politely declined). 

Part 3


With all of this discussion of sexuality, I have also decided to make my big summer project based on sex and gender. After talking with several people at IDH, I decided to commit to make a documentary about the Trans* community in Cochabamba. I am working with Oscar, my direct boss in Communications at IDH, to film interviews with a lot of different people in the Trans* community. I am also going to the Pride march on June 30 to film. Tomorrow I have a meeting with a prominent Trans* activist here to talk more about logistics. The film is going to address discrimination in the health care system and discrimination at the societal level against Trans* individuals. I will surely be posting much more about it as the project develops!

Strangely Normal

Five Strange* Things About Bolivia:

1. The stray dogs. There are so many. Planted on every street corner. There is one that sits in front of my house all day ever day and looks ferocious.
2. The consumption of soda. This might actually be the same in the States, I don't know. But it's so weird to me that everyone drinks soda here instead of water. (Obvs. it's because the water here is not drinkable, but I am surprised that people substitute it with soda instead of something else)
3. Buses. Damn these Truffis. So many buses, no maps, no official routes, hella people, a lot of broken car doors.
4. The level of potato consumption. So. Many. Potatoes. Potatoes for days and days and days.
5. The response I have gotten from Bolivians who ask me where I am from. When I say United States I have gotten these responses thus far (all translated from Spanish to English):

Oh, what do you think about Barack Obama killing Osama Bin Laden?

You have really nice tripods... but they take too long to get here so we ordered ours from Israel.

You speak Spanish!?!

You are confused by the metric system, yes?

Five Relatively Normal** Things About Bolivia:

1. There is running, hot water, which I wasn't expecting (this is not a result of me being ignorant (for the most part), but a result of being told in our preparation class that there probably would not be). When I told my host mom I was surprised that all of our host families had hot water she was pretty shocked that I expected otherwise.
2. There are tacos here. Thank god.
3. Everyone is on facebook all the time. Walking past an internet cafe is like walking past Palo Alto's ideal advertisement.
4. There is a ton of political turmoil, almost entirely divided along socio-economic lines.
5. When I introduce myself to people, they have no idea what pronouns to refer to me with so they generally avoid talking to or about me at all costs.

*Strange in the context of me being a silly American.

**Normal in the context of things that I am used to.

Creativity

I was teaching myself illustrator at work today and decided to make this cartoon just for funsies.

 

Oranges, Laundry, and Jesus Christ

I spent most of the day yesterday (Sunday) with my host family. It might have been the most domestic I have ever been! Maybe I will get married and buy a picket fence one day, who knows. 

First, I helped my host mom make breakfast. My host family doesn't really eat anything for breakfast, but they drink juice and tea and there are always plates on the table but nobody uses them. I juiced 40 oranges in their handy juicer to make 1 liter of orange juice (Cray, right?). Nobody mixes their juice with water here, so the orange juice is really thick and pure (but I like it!). We also juiced carrots for carrot juice. After breakfast I washed my clothes. My host family has a washing machine, which is really rare in Bolivia, but it's a little different than the states because you put your own hot water into it. While my clothes were washing, I picked oranges from their orange trees for the next day's orange juice. Ignacio and I also watered the plants in the garden (although Ignacio was more so watering the ants on the sidewalk than the plants). I hung my clothes to dry and then I went to lunch with my host dad's family! His parents have a sweet apartment in the northern part of the city and they are super, super nice. He even has a cousin who lives in Fremont, CA who was visiting and we bonded over the Bay. 

For lunch we ate a potato soup, then a pork stew, then a plate of rice and corn (corn kernels here are like 12 times bigger than kernels in the States, fun fact.) It was delicious! I found out that part of my host dad's family is Mormon, which I thought was super interesting/weird because I didn't realize there was a Mormon population in Cochabamba. 

Then, we met up with some FSD folks and CASM (my new abbreviation for Cynthia, Annie, Sarah, Manuela) and went to El Cristo! 

My favorite two year old. 

Jesus. In all of his glory.

On the way to the top of the mountain/hill where the Christ is, we stopped, looking out over the south of Cochabamba, and Mauricio from FSD explained that much of the people in the South do not have running water or electricity. Next to the mountain, however, there was the Cochabamba Country Club with a giant pool and golf course. The juxtaposition of those two images was pretty powerful. 

Southern Cochabamba -- the lake in this picture is very contaminated b/c it is used as a sewage receptacle for a lot of the southern neighborhoods.

After the Christ, I went home and watched a scary movie with my host dad (The Lady in Black) and went to bed semi early.

Today was my first official day of work, but it was a little weird because part of it was orientation and a lot of it was waiting for orientation to start. I talked with the director of communications at IDH, though, and found out that the organization has a pretty nice Sony HDV Cam AND the full package of Adobe programs and Final Cut. I'm hoping that I can spend a lot of my time editing footage for them to create commercials or informational videos for their website. 

Lastly, we went to a meeting from 6:30 - 8:30pm with the new volunteers from local high schools who are going to have weekly meetings to prepare for their positions as medical volunteers at the SIDAexpo in September, which is essentially a giant annual workshop/festival/event that addresses HIV/AIDS in Cochabamba. 

One of the directors of IDH told us that in 2006 a newspaper in Bolivia got a list from the Department of Public Health of all of the people in Cochabamba with AIDs or HIV and printed their names, addresses, and professions in the newspaper... Talk about fucked up discrimination. 

Adventures

In my two days on my own in Cochabamba I have managed to get lost at least 14 times. How is this real life? Some stories:

1. Today, I was in the center of the city and, since Cochabamba does not have maps of their buses (everything functions via the memory of the drivers/passengers sans maps), I wasn't sure which bus to take in order to get home for lunch. I asked a police office. The police officer told me to get on certain bus-- note that buses here are not "buses" like in the states, they are normally car-sized vehicles that have been gutted and refurbished with more seats where the trunk normally would be-- and it would take me to the cross street that I need to go (I showed him a map). But one thing that FSD warned us about is that Bolivians really want to be helpful, which means if they don't know where you need to go... they will make it up. So I got on a bus, naturally ended up on the complete opposite side of the city, and ended up walking for about an hour until I found a familiar street and bus line. But I got back safe and sound and I burned all of the calories from my cerveza the night before!

2. This afternoon I went to La Cancha which is one of the biggest and busiest markets in the world. It stretches across about a dozen blocks in the south of Cochabamba and it is CRAY. They sell everything from traditional Bolivian hats and dresses, to toiletries, to mock-prada purses, to vegetables, to speaker systems in tiny stalls that are squished next-to and on top of each other. I wish I had pictures, but we were warned not to bring ANYTHING of value other than the money we would spend hidden and dispersed across our person. I bought a belt (because mine broke) and some sunglasses (because I sat on mine and broke them) and deoderant (because mine melted on the plane ride here and I've been scraping it out of the bottom of the container for the last week)-- are you sensing a theme of me being negligent toward my belongings? There is also a ton of street food in La Cancha that would probably give me parasites but looks dankity dank (= delicious)

3. This weekend there is a conference in Cochabamba for diplomats from all over Latin America, which means that the Bolivian military is out in full force. Walking around in the city center means walking past dozens of armed men (with giant guns) every few blocks.

4. Lastly, I was getting off a Truffi (small bus) today and someone on the bus tried to snatch my watch right off my wrist (watch = $15 at Target, not a great steal). They did not manage to actually take it because I swatted their hand away, but they did break the band. This means I must go without a watch for awhile which is going to be, a) Terrible, and b) Good because it might help get rid of my watch tan line.

Check out this sick interactive map I made of the places I go often in Cochabamba (I realize this is kind of an invitation for someone to stalk me... but, like, I'm just going to hope for the best, if someone really wanted to attack me they could probably figure all of this stuff out without needing the map, right?):




View Cochabamba in a larger map

¡La Primera Dia!

Last night, I moved in with my host family! They are very, very sweet and helpful. They live in the Southwest part of the city in a very nice house with four bedrooms! The parents, Paula and Martín, have been really helpful in helping me adjust to speaking Spanish 24/7. They also have a niece that lives here and goes to the University although I haven't really talked with her yet. Their two year old son is adorable as well. Last night, my host mom made me some quinoa and tea (I've been really sick since arriving here so I have not been eating much) and we talked a bit about my life in San Francisco and what she does every day here in Cochabamba. I played with Ignacio (the son) a little bit and I went to sleep really early because I was super tired.

My bed for the summer

This morning I went to work at 8:30 at IDH  (Institute for Human Development). We didn't have an official work day, just a quick meeting and introductions to the staff. IDH is incredible. Their office is a large building with really advanced technology in comparison to the other organizations in Cochabamba. I will be working in the Communications section of the organization, working with various forms of media most likely. I won't know exactly until Monday. In the back of the building there is a really nice auditorium with a projector. The communications office has two iMacs and a small audio recording system.... I am going to have A LOT of fun with their equipment I think.

After touring the building, I already had an idea for what I want my big project and grant proposal to be. Because the auditorium is so nice and modern, I was thinking it would be a great place to screen films that deal with issues related to sexual rights. I'm thinking I might propose a program for high school students (specifically those who might be LGBT, HIV positive, or otherwise inclined to discuss sexual-health/rights issues) where a movie would be screened once a month that deals with these issues. Then I would design discussion questions for after the movie to discuss the issues the movie addresses. I would also design an advertising campaign so that IDH could advertise the group in high schools and around the city. I think it could be a really awesome outlet for LGBT youth who otherwise are not welcomed by society. I would want to start, possibly, with the film XXY from Argentina and then research other films in Spanish that deal with these issues. Maybe throw in a few English-language films as well like Milk. The budget would include purchasing the 12 DVDs (one year of screenings) and supplies for advertising. It's just an idea, but I am getting pretty excited about it!

I stared at a map for a long while after work and figured out how to walk to my host family's house (thanks to help from Julia and Patricia from FSD!) and I got there totally fine. Sin problemas! This afternoon I am going to brave the bus systems and try to figure out how to get to Sarah's host family's house and then out and about in the city... Could get crazy!

A park 2 blocks from my house

Avenue Blanco Galindo - The big street by my host family's house