Bolivian Census 2012

I have just been counted by the young representative assigned to cover the neighborhood of Magisterio in the south zone for the first Bolivian Census in 11 years. He asked me questions about the following:

• construction materials of the walls, floors and roof and basic power/sanitation services of the house we rent;
• the number of people living on the property;
• how long we have lived here;
• the kind of work we do.

After he completed his survey, I asked for a photo to mark the occasion. He stood beneath the pacai tree.

After completing the survey for our house he passed outside the exterior wall and on to the doors of our neighbors. The process will take all day, during which time no one but a small number of approved people can operate motor vehicles.  No shops can open. A few dogs are barking. The neighborhood is quiet.

About a week back . . .

In Santa Vera Cruz I share some time with people who are terminally ill and living at a hospice operated by the Missionary Sisters of Calcutta. R, one of the residents, asked if I could show a particular movie there, Codigos de Guerra (Windtalkers).  I found a copy and scheduled a show time.

At the hospice six residents and a few others wheeled or walked in to watch as the little pharmacy transformed first into a theater and then into the horrors of hand-to-hand military combat between Japanese and American soldiers on Saipan in World War II. Soon the narrative centered on internal suffering from struggling with close relationships that survive when the people you shared them with have been destroyed. A part of that daily struggle becomes whether it is possible to allow oneself to get close to anyone or anything⎯regardless of whether it seems worth our while. In that, we may find ourselves aggressively practicing a philosophy of avoidance, or maybe just more generally wondering what part we might play if we found ourselves in the Samaritan story. Or in the future would any of us live in any way other than as a memory?

The movie affected each of us.  One or two dozed. Several left, maybe looking for early lunch, maybe too upset by all of that very real seeming exploding and hacking and burning. I found myself back in a bar in Bloomington, Indiana, in 1975, splitting a pitcher of beer with B, a Navajo code talker during World War II. B was working with the Linguistics Department at the university. He was also drinking a lot. That was when his battle memories rose up and his stories started flying like bullets. They seemed real enough to wound him again, and part of him even seemed to want that. I hadn't thought of B in several decades, and there he was, eyes burning with memories that wouldn't go away. The trail led on to memories of other veterans that made it home from that conflict⎯JY of the Pacific theater and TH at Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge. I met them when they were older, with their eyes sometimes burning, sometimes like lead.

R was rapt through it all, quiet, but intense, losing focus on the movie only when pain dissolved his expression.

The movie ended. The lights flipped on, restoring the black plastic-draped windows of the little pharmacy, the chairs and wheelchairs crowded together, the medicine cabinet. R thanked me for showing the movie.  Someone wheeled him away, and the others went away as well. I disassembled the equipment for showing the movie, winding up the electrical cords, packing speakers and projector and tripod into my backpack.  As I locked down the wheels of a gurney so I could use it as a ladder to take down the plastic curtain, I heard intermittent wails of pain. They went on as I lowered the curtains and folded them away.  Eventually they subsided, and the following silence was rich.  I hoisted the pack up onto my back and with a wince settled it into place. A nurse came in.

"Who was wailing?" I asked.

"R. Not so good."

I nodded. "Will he be okay?"

The nurse looked at me in the way that my question deserved, then said, "Sure. Can you stay for lunch? You're invited."

I had a class to teach at Carcel Abra in less than an hour. I was glad. "Can't.  I'll be back on Tuesday."

We nodded and went on.

Farewell Gregorio Iriarte

Gregorio Iriarte's faith in education to transform the political state does not depart with him and still may advance peaceful international relations in Bolivia during the decolonized age.

http://m.lostiempos.com/diario/actualidad/local/20121013/homenajes-marcan-la-partida-del-padre-iriarte-luchador-de_188682_400984.html

http://m.lostiempos.com/diario/actualidad/nacional/20121013/evo-ataca-a-eeuu-y-genera-polémica_188691_401002.html

Passing-the-baton moments...

As Lynn and I complete the final months of our tour of service here in Bolivia, we see new missioners coming (Franciscans like Kitzi and Michael, Maryknollers, and others), and we hope that they find good relations both with their mission organizations, with the service sites where they choose to volunteer, and with the communities where they live.  I know this doesn't always happen, but part of being on mission seems to be a willingness to work with less than perfect situations. I suppose we are all on mission, and in that sense I take seriously the adage on posters in the churches here, toda mi vida es mision. We also find ourselves saying goodbye to those missioners who must leave—I have yet to encounter anyone saying, "boy am I glad to get out of here"—and in doing so we see the time for our own farewells approaching.

A common metaphor for all of this to-ing and fro-ing is passing the baton.¹ It implies an orderly transition in which the present momentarily unites the past and the future as that all important objective—whether a stick, or a water project, or the education of a group of young children—carries on. There may be more of these moments lately, or maybe I am just more conscious of them:

• F, an advanced English student at the carcel, teaching English to the basic-level students at the carcel. He was doing a good job, providing just enough direction in Castellano to lead them in to English pronunciation, giving examples, but not losing sight of the components he was teaching, greetings and farewells. During this class a new young inmate poked his head through the doorway to see what was going on.  He watched and listened, then started to leave. F called him back and asked if he wanted to learn some English.  He nodded and took a seat in the back row.  F encouraged him to move forward so he could see the whiteboard. He did, and soon he had a borrowed text, a pencil, and a sheet of notepaper. I hoped this would make some of his time there easier.  
• A and her husband E: leaving the Eco-tourism program at UAC-CP before she could finish because she had become pregnant, reminding me of JC and L, who similarly restructured their plans about 35 years before.
• Visiting the Maryknoll Language Institute with A and E just to walk through the quiet gardens and see the photos of the people who taught Lynn and me and to say hello to a few of the current students there, missioners from the US and various European countries, working to acquire that critical ability to communicate.
• Munching on a sandwich at Globos on the Prado as the 5-year-old campesino steps in to your gaze and begs for food, his plastic food bowl exactly the same as the one we have for Kitty, our domesticated stray cat.
• The Cochabamba woman who worked cleaning houses in Arlington, VA, until she was forced to return to Cochabamba with her three children.
• M and B, a young couple from Cochabamba that just returned to Arlington, VA, struggling to find work and some way to become legal residents this time.

I'm reminded of a line from today's reading from the Book of Job: The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD!"
__________

¹ I remember receiving and passing the baton during relay races: my teammate rounding the turn, referees adjusting lane assignments by place in preparation for the handoff, both teammates looking for a blink of eye contact amid the strain and stride of that leg's final paces, the stretch of two arms, one forward with the hand clenched around the stick, one back with the hand outstretched, palm up, legs already striding as the tiring runner plunges into the zone.  Despite the pain of racing, it's a blessing when the mission is as simple as getting the stick around the track as quickly as possible.

Dust Storms

For me, last week was rough. Every gust of wind seems to raise a dust cloud, and already with a cold, I was an easy victim for laryngitis, flu symptoms, and so forth. I was not able to teach my part of our classes so Lynn talked more than usual. However, early in the week I met with two representatives of pastoral care for penitentiaries at the Archbishop's Office. I am still trying to complete certificates of participation for the inmates in our English courses at Abra. With the certificates, Lynn and I hope they qualify for some reduction of their sentences. I also asked about the inmate with HIV who was refused treatment at a local hospital.  From our discussion I understood the following about the inmate's dilemma:

·      Doctors are obligated to treat patients, including those that are HIV-positive;

·      The inmate was initially treated and advised that he should first wait to see if his broken bone would set satisfactorily after being repositioned and splinted;

·      He returned to the hospital the following day and requested the operation to set the bone using metal screws and a plate;

·      Pending this operation, he was admitted to the hospital and placed in a ward for [HIV?]-infected patients;

·      In Bolivia it is the patient's responsibility to purchase in advance the materials that will be used in the operation, and apparently the patient was aware of this;

·      At the scheduled time for the operation the patient did not have the necessary materials ready, for which the operation did not proceed.

·      The doctor did not refuse to treat the patient because the patient was HIV-positive.

I have no reason to doubt this version of events, in which case the Abra protesters' support for their fellow inmate misrepresented the doctor's reasons for acting as he did. In one newspaper account Celima Torricoa, the Government Secretary for Human Development, said that the incident would be investigated thoroughly. From those findings I hope to verify that the doctor did not refuse to provide treatment and the inmate was not refused treatment because he happened to be HIV-positive.

I regret having left a false impression for a week but the combination of my illness and our having lost internet access during all of that time (just restored an hour ago) made it difficult until now to post an update. 

Tranquility

Sometimes when I go to Abra to teach my English language classes at the carcel I stop at the tienda across the road for a drink of water and to chat. Usually the tienda is open and someone is around.  Today it was S, the owner of the tienda. This was also laundry day. S sat on a rock in the shade as she doubled down on a pair of denims. Her shoulders and triceps sent the sudsy water hissing over the edge of the tub between her legs.¹  Probably the jeans were her husband's.  He sometimes works inside the carcel, making repairs, chatting in the commissary with some of the men. S and I exchanged greetings, remarked on the increasing mid-afternoon heat as spring advanced.  This heat felt comfortable to me--like I was absorbing needed energy rather than losing it. However, it was intense, and a brief time in the direct sun makes me feel like I'm about to ignite.  The locals say Bolivia is directly beneath a hole in the ozone layer at this time of year, and it certainly feels hot enough for me to believe it.  I glanced around the surrounding yard and saw dogs and puppies, a cat chasing a butterfly, baby chicks peeping one after the other as a rooster chased after a fleeing hen, and ducks sucking muddy water from a puddle, raising their bills skyward with each bill-full as though guzzling champagne.

Although Lynn and I see more dark clouds travelling east to west these days, September is still in the dry season.² When the winds buffet the orangey-red dust whirls up to mark the movement. The dust settles over everything--the cactus blades, the flowering scrub brush. This blending-with-the-terrain quality contrasts with the way the people (well, not all people, and I count myself in this latter group) can walk along impervious to dust and perspiration.  E--S's 5-year-old granddaughter--was that way, looking prim and clean, a princess of the yard. We wished each other good afternoon, and she asked where I was going. I always enjoy her questions because she seems both friendly and demanding, and I owed her a reply because I was after all trespassing in her yard.

It would have been a pleasant afternoon just to talk with S and E--a welcome contrast to the women and children I meet begging on the streets in the city--but I had a class to teach, and I planned also to ask if the men inside were interested in playing a soccer match against the student friars I teach at the convent in the city. It could be an interesting experience for both groups.

So I passed through the checkpoint at the outer gate, having my belongings inspected, receiving a pat-down search and then the stamp of approval.  That was always the longest delay in entering.  The inner gate was always easy to pass.  However, as I passed through the gate at the chain link fence something seemed different.

Rather than the usual few men lounging and chatting just inside the final gate, men began pouring through the doorway of the first main building, the one that houses the wood-burning crafts shop, the call center, the education office, and the library. They scattered through the yard surrounding the inner gate, and just as quickly as they found places to stand, more poured out of the building to crowd around the others, some running up the stairwell to take positions along the bannisters or ascending to the flat rooftop to line the low wall facing the main outer wall.  Soon I was surrounded by a good portion of the 500 plus inmates, all with serious looks on their faces.

From a few of them I heard "Hola, Profe," which made me feel better, and R tried to sell me one of his over-priced chocolate treats on a stick, as he always does³, so I didn't feel entirely weird. Today I had more appetite for news than chocolate, so I asked J, one of our students, what was happening. Then it happened.

One shirtless inmate jumped up on a rock,  faced us, and started shouting. All the other men started shouting back in unison, and the whole yard was thundering with righteous indignation. I had the general idea, but J leaned close enough to shout in my ear, "protesta."

And the man on the rock shouted, "Que queremos?"
And the men throughout the yard shouted, "Salud!"
And the man on the rock shouted, "Cuando lo queremos?"
And the men throughout the yard shouted, "Ahora!"

Solidarity seemed better than just standing by, so soon I was shouting "Salud!" and "Ahora!" on cue and in unison with the others. The chanting continued for about fifteen minutes or more.  Suddenly the main gate swung open, and the commandant stepped through. Off to one side I noticed that a cameraman from one of the local television stations was taking video of the protest. I wondered what was going to happen next. As the commandant passed through the wire fence, I saw that he was smiling.  He entered alone and began chatting with the men. It looked as though everything was going to be all right.  He seemed to be assuring everyone that their complaint had been heard and that it would also be presented on television and in the newspaper.

And, of course, at just this moment the gate opened, the waves of men parted, and Lynn entered like Venus on the half shell, mouthing from across the way so I could read her lips, "What-the-hell?"⁴

Soon the men in the yard began to drift away, back to their activities.  I passed through the building and up the stairs to the library. Soon the students began to arrive. Amid talk of count and non-count nouns I also learned from the men that they had protested because an incident the previous day. During a soccer match one of the men had fractured a tibia. When he was taken to a local hospital for treatment, the emergency physician on duty refused to care for him. This seemed outrageous, and I thought of the blues singer Bessie Smith who bled to death after a Memphis hospital refused to treat her because she was black. How great could the prejudice against the inmates be?

Later during the class we reminded the men that the friars were interested in a soccer match.  All that was needed was a date that would work for both groups. We finished the class and Lynn and I went our own way.

When I read the story about the protest in the newspaper the following day I learned that the doctor had refused to care for the man with the fractured leg bone because the man was or was suspected of being HIV-positive.

I empathize with both the doctor and the protesting inmates. From my work at the Santa Vera Cruz hospice I see the wasting effects of AIDS in otherwise healthy young men.  No one would want to risk contracting that. I do not know the extent of precautions taken by Bolivian hospitals to protect doctors and staff against HIV, but I will ask. Maybe some of the doctors feel that currently their best defense is to refuse treatment.  I do not know the extent of HIV infection among the prison population, but I will ask. I imagine that under the circumstances some of the young friars might also hesitate to play a full-tilt soccer match against the inmates. The Bolivian government also has a roll⁵ to play in mandating both treatment policy and guidelines for precautions--both at prisons and hospitals--to reduce risk.
                                                                
__________
¹S washed with such a rhythm that had she been at the oars of a skiff we would have crossed the valley in no time.
²The climate offers two options--mud or dust.
³Some say this is how he supports his drug habit, but I still sometimes buy one.
⁴Beats-me! I replied. We always do our lip reading in English. I tried to convince her that this was a surprise celebration for her arrival, but she wasn't having it.
⁵Well, okay, I meant role to play, but it was late when I wrote this, and I was getting cross signals for croissants.

Retreat

Archbishop Tito celebrates Mass at Hospicio Santa Vera Cruz.
Members of the Missionary Sisters of Calcutta attended
including Mother Superior Jocele (2nd from left) and
Mother General Mary Prema (left).

Sharing the peace of Christ with a handshake

This past Friday the 13th Lynn and I attended a Mass and festival at the Hospicio in Santa Vera Cruz. The Mass convened in the chapel within the Hospicio. Archbishop of Cochabamba Tito Solari celebrated.  Numerous groups attended: patients who live at the hospice, members of the surrounding community of Santa Vera Cruz (including children preparing for first communion), Franciscan (including Michael Reddel) and Maryknoll lay missioners who volunteer and/or live nearby, and active and retired members of several Catholic religious orders. These events were also attended by Sister Mary Prema Pierick, M.C. (on the left in the first photo). Sister Mary is the current (2012) Superior General of the Missionaries of Charity of Calcutta, India, the religious institute founded by Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

The Mass and celebration demonstrated the need for and appreciation of the Hospice in the area.  Many Bolivian families continue the tradition of caring for their own sick and dying. However, the cost of doing so makes this difficult for some families and impossible for others.  As it has in so many categories here in Bolivia, the Church and other volunteer organizations have filled the gap for the much needed social safety net.  Some terminally ill patients cannot pay for end of life care, and others may face abandonment by their families because of the social stigma of having contracted SIDA.

Celebrating community with a dance and song following Mass.

The Calcutta Sisters also provide catechesis training for children and adolescents of the community who wish to become members of the Church. As first communion approaches, teachers from the Archbishop's office in Cochabamba (including Lynn, who worked with the catechesis teachers in Barrio Don Bosco) visit the various communities to share information about the life of Jesus, the beliefs of the Church, and ritual and faith within the Catholic community in Latin America.

The celebration was entirely positive. However, to me it was sad to see the Hospice patients in the midst of all the color and activity. Obviously, when the celebration ended they would still be as they were, struggling with their infirmities and contemplating death. It was good that the celebration probably helped them transcend for a time--one perspective--but better that they could see, hear, and feel the support of those who accepted them and who believed in forgiveness and eternal life.

Mother General gives blessed medals to two local break dancers
who earlier demonstrated spinning in rhythm boca abajo.

A day later Lynn and I began a three-day retreat at Convento Tarata, about an hour away from Cochabamba.  It was our way of celebrating our wedding anniversary.  We talked and talked and thought about many things past, present, and in the future.  We walked in the gardens, sat on the home-made chairs, strolled the broad silent halls of the cloister, gazed down at the beautiful central courtyard. Our conversation may have seemed rambling--family, friends, work, Bolivia, United States, faith, community, direction and lack of it, prayer, continuing and starting over and wondering. One thing is certain, we do not feel that we are living in a perfect world, but we are very grateful that we still have our time together.