San Ignacio de Moxos 31 de Julio Fiesta

On Wednesday, we went to the nearby town of San Ignacio de Moxos for the 31 de Julio Fiesta. It's a 3+ day festival that's a little like Carnival in Spain. It celebrates the anniversary of the founding of the little Jesuit mission town 324 years ago and mixes Spanish and indigenous cultures. The fiesta has rodeos, people dressed in indigenous clothing, dancing, singing, eating, and drinking.

On our two and a half hour taxi ride (that left two hours late), we noticed that the size of a town in the Beni is closely related to the size of its ditches that transport rainwater, sewerage, and waste through the city. Trinidad has a large system of ditches that run between the sidewalks and streets. These prove challenging for us as tourists - you have to be very sure you can clear the ditch before you make the jump. In San Ignacio de Moxos, the ditches are much smaller (population of ~15,000) and in San Borja (population ~30,000) they are larger than SIDM but smaller than in Trinidad. Here is a picture of the large water system as we were driving out of Trinidad.

During the rainy season (Nov-March), much of the wetlands flood - these people who live outside of Trinidad build their houses on stilts to avoid the flooding similar to other monsoon prone areas.

The road around Trinidad is beautiful and the region, the llanos de moxos, is part of the largest protected wetlands in the world. You can easily spot many different species as you travel along it. Here is a man-made lake outside of Trinidad. As we'll discuss in a future post, many of these man-made lakes were created more than 1,000 years ago.

We got to cross the Mamore River (the largest Bolivian tributary to the Amazon River) on boat again.

When we got to San Ignacio de Moxos, the town was bustling with activity. Funny enough, in the lonely planet guide that we found online, they say that San Ignacio has zero things to do and three places to stay. However, for one magical week each year, it is transformed into a fiesta for the ages. After the fiesta, San Ignacio goes back to being a sleepy, dusty town.

They had a stage set up for speeches and announcements. A crew was filming some of the festivities as they are clearly trying to promote this fiesta for future tourism efforts in the region. The poster reads "Bolivia waits for you".

The indigenous costumes were really interesting as different groups had different colors, which you can particularly see in the brightly clad headdresses with feathers.

Like the other mission towns in Bolivia, there is a church on the square. This church seats 3,000, so it's one of the larger ones we've seen.

Alongside with the dancing and singing, they have a huge rodeo. This stadium was constructed for the fiesta. The grandstands were pretty interesting with various ladders placed up to the intersections for people to climb up and down.

We got a good spot on the other side of the stadium right against the fence and were able to see most of the action pretty well. Inside the stadium were brave young men, who may have had some of that courage fueled by alcohol as we saw vendors inside selling pacena beers and others with bottles of alcohol.

The spectacle was pretty remarkable. They had one or two bulls out at all times and a somewhat chaotic process of letting the bull go wild as various men got in front of it momentarily trying to draw the bull into charging at a shirt or towel they were waving.

Anytime the bull got close to hitting or actually hit someone, the crowd would roar in anticipation, wonder, and amazement. Asher felt like he was in the midst of a Hemingway novel and at one point asked Kelly if he should jump in the arena, to which Kelly looked at Asher, shook her head, and bluntly said, "no."

A tangible feeling was in the air, as young men would work up the courage to jump into the arena while sitting in the stands and dreaming of immortality. This courage rose and waned quickly as we saw boys and men jumping in, getting somewhat close to the action, and then seemingly running for their lives and jumping back into the stands as the bull got close.

In the event of an injury during the rodeo/bull festivities, a really nice ambulance was parked (albeit empty) outside the stadium. It seems that the EMT here may have been participating in the festivities as well.

We had a great time. It was nice to get out of Trinidad for the day and experience one of the best fiesta's  in the Beni of the year.

On the next blog post, we'll write about the ethnoarcheological and fish museum in Trinidad (teaser: yes they have the little fish there that swims up the penis if you urinate in the water).

Around Trini

It's been a little while since our last post. I think we expected to have daily stories for you about all of the trouble we've had getting our residency documents. Luckily, however, the process here in Trinidad is going smoothly. More on that later - we hope to celebrate submitting our applications for the one-year residency visas soon.

While we wait for some final documents, we've been getting to know Trinidad - Trini to people here - a bit better. We knew we were in the Amazon, but we were still surprised when we looked up from our empanadas in the plaza one morning this week and saw a sloth climbing down a tree. Of course we didn't have our camera, but we got this picture of him later in the day when he had climbed back up the tree. He's a bit hard to see, but maybe you can find him (he's there, promise).

Last time we posted, an Antarctic storm - a "sur" - had come through the Amazon. Temperatures went from 90 degrees one day to 50 the next. It stayed cold for a few days but is back to high 80s and 90s now. The only memory we have of our first sur of the winter is Kelly's cough.

As you would expect from travelers in general and from us in particular, we've enjoyed some more great food and treats, like fresh coconuts. We love our cocos, the coco water is the best and for only 5 bs. (~75 cents) you can have an entire coco all to yourself.

Along with his dissertation, Asher has started a new project. People in Trini get around by moto when not walking. There are motos everywhere! And as an anthropologist, Asher is prone to making observations. People here are very resourceful. Since the majority of people travel by moto, we see their resourcefulness daily through their #MotoCarries. We've seen full families on motos (the record so far is 2 adults and 4 kids), moto chair carries, moto bed carries, moto baby carries, our new favorite Moto Cake carries, and even a most impressive double Moto Cake.

MotoFamily

MotoChair

MotoAirbag

MotoSideSit

MotoCake

Double Moto Cake

On our upcoming posts, we'll talk about the 31 de Julio fiesta in San Ignacio de Moxos and our visits to the ethnoarcheological and fish museums in Trinidad. Stay tuned for more pictures and stories.

Trini

We can only keep you coming back if we take a break from bureaucracy to tell you a little more about what we've been up to when we're not waiting at the police station or making photocopies of documents. Last Saturday, we traveled from San Borja, the small town where we will be spending most of our time when we aren't in the Tsimane' communities, to Trinidad, the capital of the department of Beni (the department we'll be in here). The trip to Trinidad takes about five hours in a six passenger taxi during the dry season.

The road is unpaved, so it's very bumpy. There are also a lot of cattle that use the road - here's one traffic jam we encountered.

The road is also beautiful - the Beni is located in the Amazon, and we drove through wetlands on the way to Trinidad. Along with the cattle, horses, and dogs moving on the road, we saw lots of birds along the side of the road. The Amazon is beautiful. Partway through the journey, there is a river that you have to cross on boat. Fortunately, the taxis can just drive right onto the boat! Here we are on the boat with our taxi.

After five hours of being jostled about, we arrived in Trinidad with big headaches, but luckily we had a day and a half to recover before starting the residency process here. This also gave us some time to explore the city. Trinidad is much larger than San Borja - it has a population of about 130,000. This means there are more motos, cars, people, and markets (we even found a micromercado - something like a small supermarket). Like many of the other towns in this part of Bolivia, Trinidad was started in the 1700s as a mission by Jesuits. Much like San Borja, it has a large plaza in the center of town with a church.

Our hotel, Santa Anita Hostal, is really nice and has wifi, coffee, water, and refrigerator included in the price ($20/night for a queen sized bed with private bath). However, it did come with 80 mosquitoes as well, which we promptly killed in the first 2 days - Asher went on an aristeia (a word Kelly learned in her freshman seminar) to remove every single mosquito from the room. We're a good team, Kelly spots, Asher kills. Also the room has a great hammock.

On Tuesday, there was a citywide strike to support indigenous leaders in opposition of a planned road that would run through indigenous land - TIPNIS. The strike shut the entire city down. Fortunately, some people informed us of the strike in advance, so we stocked up on some food for Tuesday. We went out to explore the city on Tuesday to see what it was like with very little going on - the markets were closed, every store was shuttered, and few people were out, except a couple juice ladies - who charge you 5 bolivianos (75 cents) for 2 glasses of fresh squeezed OJ made with 6-8 oranges.

There were even roadblocks on the streets to keep motos and cars off the roads. Local teenagers seemed to be having a great time taking over the streets - these guys were thrilled to pose for us while sitting on a bench in the middle of the road. The kids wanted us to tag them on facebook, but unfortunately we didn't get their names.

At the same time, a sur - a winter storm from the Antarctic - came in. We were in the markets when we felt the weather change. It was a fairly warm day (we're not too far from the equator after all), and all of a sudden there was a breeze that felt as though someone had opened a freezer door. The temperature has been in the 40s, 50s, and low 60s since - cold enough to make Kelly want to find somewhere warmer than the Amazon. 

Thankfully (particularly for the people here whose houses are not built for cold weather), temperatures will be in the high 80s again this weekend and into the 90s very soon. 

We've met several other researchers in Trinidad - a couple of whom we met in San Borja and ran into here - so we're having a good time. We're also finding the atmosphere very conducive to getting some work done in between exploring the city and doing residency requirements. We're enjoying Trinidad while we're here. Tonight, we even bought a nice Bolivian malbec wine (paired with some cheese crackers and cookies) to enjoy. 

Thanks for all of your messages and emails - we love hearing from you while we're gone. Keep them coming!! 

Residency Visa: Part 1 - San Borja

When I got into anthropology, it was to try to understand the unique human condition, to try to figure out why people behave the way they do when many times those behaviors result in negative health outcomes. What did not occur to me at the time, which most of my anthropology colleagues can also attest to, was that in order to answer these important questions and to get to those canoes and chicha, you must first undergo a long, tedious and sometimes frustrating process of bureaucracy in both the US and abroad. This process, while seemingly cumbersome, is ultimately important for the protection of both the applicants and the countries involved.

We've heard many stories about other PhD students' experiences with bureaucracy in Bolivia that we prepared ourselves for the worst. The one thing they all stressed was to have patience and be persistent. Some examples of what we've heard (although almost all of the bad experiences happened in Trinidad): talking to the person at immigration who is in charge and asking what was required for the year visa, being told one requisite at a time, then when you bring it back, she says ok now you need requisite two, and proceeds to do this for a week.

Another example with the same immigration person was when a student from Spain went to her and said here are all of the documents, I need the one-year visa and the person responded: Where did you hear of these requirements, they're wrong ... I don't even know you, you expect me to give you a visa.

A third and most humorous example involved another Spanish student who was applying for the visa and when he gave pictures with his application (you have to give tons of little 4 by 4 cm pictures with a red background with every application) he had a beard, which he had since shaved it off. So the person says, "you have a beard in these photos, we can't process it since you don't have a beard now". The student responded "what do you want me to do, I can't just grow a new beard on the spot". So the person says, "ok with a beard, that'll be an extra 15 boliviano fee". (Note: 1 US dollar is ~7 Bolivianos)

Our quest: a one-year temporary residence visa. The requirements numerous, the requirements for the requirements even more numerous. To even apply for this visa, we had to first get a special purpose visa in the US which was a long and complicated process, which actually now seems like a cake walk.

The first two requisites for the one-year visa we had to obtain in San Borja: a local background check and a residency verification. For these, we needed a host of documents, including a signed certificate from the owner of the home where we live, photocopies of two witness IDs, a copy of the title of the house, a copy of the blueprints, photocopies of our visa, pictures of us, and a formal memorial from a lawyer requesting these documents. The one police officer who deals with these requests was a patronizing cop, who was both by-the-book and reluctant to do anything. When we first came to him, he said we were short four of these requirements. The next day, he said we needed separate applications for both Asher and Kelly. When we gave him those, he said come back Monday.

On Monday, he was not at work. On Tuesday, he said he needed to call the police in Trinidad, but to call them he needed us to buy a prepaid card for his cell-phone (all cell phones in Bolivia are pre-paid and can be "recharged" at local stores). After he called, he said we needed to go to Trinidad, the capital of the department of beni, to do the local background check. So we asked if we could do the local residency verification without it, and he said to be at our house at 4 pm.

We waited outside our house for an hour and a half and the cop never showed up. On Wednesday morning, we went to the police office again and he followed us to our house and verified our residency. We then spent 3 hours while he typed up the documents. We got the documents and then talked to the police captain. The local police captain was an interesting, slightly chubby/stocky, mid 40's man with thinning hair and bottom braces who was very nice, but ultimately corrupt. We noticed he has a calendar on the wall with a topless female police officer on it. Asher actually snapped a picture of this, it's just not something we see every day (but we'd rather not post that picture, but it is available upon request). However, it is ridiculous that it's on his wall as it's very misogynistic.

He said that while they couldn't do the local background check normally, he may be able to call someone and do it for a fee of 140 bolivianos for each of us. So we paid it. We came back Thursday, hopeful to finish the process, yet again the first officer said they couldn't do the local background check. We asked to speak to the captain and he said to come back that afternoon. We later explained to him, again, that all we needed was a local background check, he said "oh, a local background check, ok. Come back Friday".

We came back Friday morning ready to go and were fingerprinted 20 times, but were told to come back again Friday afternoon at 5. We came back and after an hour, the by-the-book cop finished the local background check and took it to the captain. We went into his office one last time, thinking he was going to give the documents to us, pat us on the back, and wish us well. But ... instead he said that each document cost an extra 200 bolivianos to "process". We tried to say that we already paid, but he made up a story about how that was for the residency requirements. Having only 600 bolivianos on us at the time and needing 300 to get to Trinidad and for food, I asked if it was possible to only pay 300 total, and he said "well for you two, OK".

In the end, we paid two "fees" for 580 bolivianos including one 25% discount, but hey at least we're done with the local police, where we spent 15 hours over 9 visits in a week and a half. In the end it's all a game, you can't get too frustrated, you just have to play the game and be patient and persistent. If graduate school teaches you one thing it's that, patience and persistence.

We are now in Trinidad, where so far the experience has been much easier. We've seen many anti-corruption posters in the police station here, which give us hope for the direction Bolivia is heading.

We'll next do a blog post on Trinidad with pictures (not many exciting pictures to take while sitting in offices), including a description of the strike going on today to protest a national road project that would go through indigenous lands.

Buen provecho!

In Bolivia, and especially in San Borja, people eat out for most meals.

Breakfast consists of some empanadas with a little bit of cheese on the inside, some other flavored bread, maybe some fruit, like little bananas, and some coffee, chocolate drink, or tea.

Actually, in the market, most of the little stalls that serve breakfast serve meat as a main part of the meal, but that's a little too heavy for us.

For lunch, meals start with soup - usually vegetables with some meat, noodles, or quinoa. Restaurants cook all of the food at once, so you usually have two or three options. We've been eating a lot of baked chicken (pollo al horno) and breaded and fried beef or chicken (milanesa). Everything is served with rice. Lately, we've been drinking Coke with lunch - I think we've had more Coke this week than we had all of last year. It's made with real sugar and is served cold, so it's very refreshing on hot days with a hot meal. Lunch is early - if you go too late (12:30), the food might be gone.

They also always bring you some yucca to put in your soup.

Dinner is late, usually at 8pm, so we've been picking up some fruit, bread, and yogurt for an afternoon snack. Kelly is a big fan of bread and has already found a few favorites.

For dinner, there are usually a lot more options (almost all with beef or chicken and always with rice and a few french fries).

There have been a few other researchers here in San Borja working with Tsimane': my advisor, Dr. Susan Tanner, some psychologists and linguists from MIT, UC-San Diego, and a university in England, which has been nice because we've gone out to eat with them a few times (and they've very generously picked up the bill every time).  One of the nights, my advisor wanted to take us to get anticucho - which is beef on a stick but also some intestines.

Dr. Susan Tanner showing off the anticucho.

For one of the dinners we had with that crew, we went to La Costa Azul and had really awesome roasted duck.

Kelly and Dr. Susan Tanner with roasted duck.

However, Susan and the MIT crew all left on Monday. Best wishes to them as they travel back to the US. We'll miss Susan - she was a huge help getting us started on the year long process.

We've also found that dinner goes best with a cold Pacena - a Bolivian beer (a Paceno is someone from La Paz). Yesterday was La Paz day, a big festival in La Paz, so we had good reason to celebrate even from a distance.

One of the funnier things we've seen in town is that San Borja now has a wannabe fast food burger place, called Good Burger. 

One of the restaurants we really like, Bibosi, has really good kebobs and filet mignon (although it's not quite the same as in the States, but for $3.50 it's worth the price!)

Dinner is also best when followed by a coconut or papaya icepop. Helado, or ice cream, is everywhere here: from little kids pushing little carts and squeaking a horn to heladerias where they serve you ice cream pops or actual ice cream and other tasty treats.

Our next post will invariably be about the grueling bureaucratic process of getting our residency visas (preview: local police standing us up and then asking for money or other things), although other top contenders include the stray animals of San Borja.