Life on San Martin casi Colombia

Just a moment to share a second in the lives of Amy and Heather Rose, residents of 179 San Martin

Part II: The Never Ending Fiesta called Cocha

After sleeping in the next morning until about noon, Casey, Steph, Heather and I ventured out of the apartment to get breakfast. As we walked around the main plaza looking for salteñas, we noticed that people were beginning to shout and run towards a corner of the plaza. I was concerned to say the least, and we thought better about going further into the center. As a last thought though, I asked a man standing on the corner why people were running. He answered, ¨Su Lider, Su Lider esta aqui.¨ ¨Who though, who is their leader¨ I asked, ¨Who is here?¨ ¨Their president, Evo,¨ he responded and smiled a little, laughing that i hadn´t known.

All five of us had heard the answer and our response was the same as the the campesinos (Bolivians from the country side who constitute Evo´s biggest supporters), we ran towards the crowd! I stood on the tips of my toes in the crowd, looking towards all the ruckus, and we chanted along with everyone else, ¨Evo, Evo!¨ hoping to catch a glimpse of him. After a few minutes of not being able to see anything though the crowd started to lose interest, and we began walking out of the plaza, only to be caught up in the sudden renewed movement of the parade of the president and his officials! People were immediately on all sides of us, pushing and pulling to get close and we held on to one another trying to keep our cool. We saw the vice president walk past us suddenly there was a band playing full blast right behind us, almost running over our feet. Chanting and walking incredibly fast the crowd pushed us along and i wondered about what people thought when they saw us...the five gringitas in the middle of this campesino parade. Finally my rising fear was quelled when we were able to fight our way out of the crowd onto the sidelines. In the middle of it all, i had realized i was in the middle of history, in a snapshot of the photographs i see. I felt like a fraud, like a ridiculously large an clearly absurd fly watching the events from the middle of it all, instead of on the wall like i should be. But it was beautiful and strange to see and touch the pulse of life so closely.

Don´t worry, by the time i´d returned to the apartment the parade had already started again, at 2:30 and continued on throughout the evening. I had learned my lesson and left as soon as possible, going to meet with a guy, Carlos, who i had asked for help on finding the instructions of how to grow some of the indiginous plants here in Bolivia. He tried the percentile crap again, fake facts all sounding so knowledgable and made up. But after that, the remainder of our meeting went nice enough, and after trying to tell me i should go home with him to get books and failing, we agreed to meet again in a few days at a cafe so he could lend them to me.

We celebrated again that night along with the rest of Cochabamba, but Casey and I decided to leave early (yes that means 1am) and get some real rest. It was lovely, and the parade on Saturday didn´t start until the afternoon, and only lasted an hour. I was happy i could have cried. The end of an era.

The lesson i have gleaned from all this?
A day without parades is a day filled with peace and happiness.

Oh, whats in a parade?

The celebration of the formation of a country is a beautiful and important date to commemorate. This is something that makes sense to me. Cities too, large or small, often take joy in the official date of their creation and often hold parades, picnics, or other jovial activities for people to participate in. I would, however, like to get the number of the person who decided that Cochabamba gets the special privilege of celebrating its birthday for..uh 3 days??

Now, i may seem a bit Scrooge-like in this statement at first, so i will be sure to explain the verb ¨celebrate¨ for anyone who would like to understand its meaning here in the land of Bo-town. This last Friday was the official birthday of the incredible city i´ve been living in for 3.5 months. Since Bolivians like to get a head start on partying though, they made sure to get up bright and early on Thursday morning to begin the festivities. I was not aware before that morning that everyone else in the city was as fond of my street as I am, because they gave Heather and I the immense blessing of starting the parade on our street. 8am rolled around and the deafening crash of bass drums and rows and rows of brass instruments being played with all possible force threw me out of my bed and running around my apartment dazed and fearful we were in the middle of the 3rd World War. Our floors and walls were rumbling with passionate repetitions of OH, When The Saints Come Marching In and the like.

Now, parades make sense, however 16 hour parades do not make sense, and by 6 hours into our 150th repetition of the same songs i was grabbing my things and running out of my room for my life and sanity.Needless to say, by the time i met up with Stephanie and Casey in the afternoon i was in a better mood, pacified a bit after a beer in a bar out of earshot of the parade. We met up at Dali´s, a restaurant where Heather my roommate works, and we ate and drank into the evening when we were planning on meeting up with our friend Pepe, who we met in the salar with his family when Steph had to go and wound herself.

On our way to meet up with Pepe and his friend Reynaldo, Steph, Casey and I had to stop for a delicious and overwhelming plate of Pique machu. We ran into a Colombian artisan, Andres, who just wouldn't leave us alone and I was glad for him to get the hint to leave after he kept trying to spout bullshit south American economics at us for a half hour. Boring! I´ve discovered that in my experience South American men, when trying to impress me start making up crap percentiles. Every time! ¨25 percent of all people...¨, ¨The colombian peso is 50,000 to an American Dollar¨ WHATEVER!! Unfortunately i lose my patience everytime and start rolling my eyes and second guessing everything they say until they excuse themselves.

We met up with Pepe and Reynaldo finally, went to the huge annual concert in the stadium, and when we were bored with our poor seats and the cold after an hour, left to move on to a favorite club, La Tirana (translation; the female tyrant!?). We drank the local beer, sang, danced and waved cochabamba flags around until 3am among tons of other young cochabambinos. It was a great ending to a day i had started out disliking greatly.