In the Dutch newspapers, Bolivia wasn’t quite a hot item anymore, so I assumed it would be ok to nose around there. Though after reading Margarita’s notes on the Bolivian situation (September’s blog), I wasn’t quite sure what to expect…
I arrived at 6 in the evening at Bolivia Viru Viru airport. Once I got through customs, Teresa stood waiting for me in the arrival hall with a nameplate. This whole happening was already exciting as I always considered the people on those nameplates probably very important. Now I know better… But the surprise was mutual, as Teresa had expected to pick someone up at the age of 70! Small detail.
After we got that cleared we headed for the house I’m staying at, a small family existing out of Alvaro and Kattia and their three little hijos. Luckily, the other two volunteers, Nina and Dorien, received me with the same excitement as Teresa and I’m guessing they were just glad I wasn’t 70 after all.
That same night they already took me out for a birthday party which was a great opportunity to check out Bolivian life. I’m happy to say that, apart from the many graffiti’s on the wall: ‘Death to Evo’ to ‘Evo will save us all’ I didn’t have an unsafe feeling and the city seemed pretty calm to me.
I soon enough found out that going out here is somewhat different from going out in Holland. Alcohol is gone within a blink of the eye and karaoke is hot hot hot! While karaoke in Holland is not so hot (and definitely not cool either) and you basically only do it when you’re wasted, here it is serious business. It doesn’t matter if you’re good or not, you get the applause of a true pop star anyways! And of course there’s no party without dancing. I traded house, pop, dance and R&B for fulltime salsa, merengue, bachata, tango and reggeaton. A lot to swallow on the first day and I slept like a rose in my new house.
The next day the girls took me to the market in the city centre where I witnessed my first attempted robbery. Too bad though the person that got robbed was me! After having ignored all the good advice from my friends, who told me not to wear anything precious, the bill got presented to me that day. Attached to my golden necklace was suddenly a big fat Bolivian whom I desperately tried to shake off. Luckily though, I WAS warned before, so I knew in an instant he was going for gold and I was able to grab my necklace before he did. Lesson learned. No more jewellery for me…
On Wednesday I would then start my new job. I was kind of anxious to leave those 4 safe walls between which I was living after the little incident on the market, but of course nothing happened and I already forgot about the whole incident when I had entered the big building of Bolivia’s biggest newspaper, El Deber. Expecting to be a flashy news reporter, I was then a bit disappointed when I found myself sitting behind a desk looking for images of emoticons. Luckily the girls at home told me that it was normal to be thrown in the deep on your first day, but that it would soon be better. So, while I’m waiting for that to happen, I might as well check out the food and the life here and try to find some more stories to write about next week.
Fingers crossed…
