My arrival in Bolivia

This article was written by Elizabeth Niels for her hometown newspaper.
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The plan for my travel to Bolivia was, simply, to fly into La Paz, commercial hub of Bolivia located approximately 12,000 ft. above sea level, and then continue northeast to the Yungas mountain range where I'd begin my five-month teaching stint at Carmen Pampa.

Should be easy enough, right? But when I stepped off the plane, I learned my first Bolivian lesson: nothing is as easy as it seems.

Upon my arrival to La Paz, I heard that the one and only road to Carmen Pampa had been blocked by the campesinos, the largely and indigenous poor people of this region, who were preventing the flow of traffic with a primitive blockade of rocks and tree limbs.

The reason for the blockade? The campesinos have a laundry list of grievances against Bolivian, US and USAID policies, all of which relate in one way or another to the extreme poverty under which they people live. Consider this telling statistic: In Bolivia, a nation of over eight million, just 45,000 people control some 85 percent of all deposits in the banking system. The rest live in poverty, often cordoned off in regions with few economic prospects, agricultural or otherwise.

And so, like all the Bolivians waiting to travel to or from the Yungas, I waited, powerless against the blockade. The Franciscan monks with whom I was living said that the blockade could come down mañana or maybe in a week or two. No one knows, they said. That’s how it normally goes in Bolivia.

While I waited, completely out of control – an anomaly for most Americans -- I had the rare blessing of time, utterly unspoken-for time. And so I explored La Paz, down its back alleys and steep cobblestone streets. I picked my way through crowed marketplaces selling dried baby llama heads sticking out of containers like umbrellas. I saw piles of guinea pigs gutted and skinned, with their big front teeth still jutting out of their little mouths. I played with grubby little kids in alleyways. I watched the Chola women in traditional bowler hats and wide skirts waddle down the street. I read. I studied Spanish. And I found that I began to move at a slower pace -- the Bolivian pace -- and I don’t think it was just because of the altitude.

Finally, after ten days of waiting, the blockade broke and I travelled to Carmen Pampa, along the precarious, cloudy, hairpin turns of the beautiful “Road of Death,” where trucks and a few trucks lay like carcases at the bottom of steep ravines.

I made it. Finally. And I did it the only way you do anything in Bolivia: by slowing down, giving up control and going with the flow. I think I’m going to like this.