Community Project

Today we had bread for breakfast, with some sugary tea.  Eliana and I walked down the mountain with Rene for our group project.  We hung around his house for a while and then walked to the school to work on a mysterious project.  No one else was there, so our group hung out by the lake.  Once we were all there, we learned that our project was to move rocks to build a community center for ethnotourists.  Right now the town center is just a little pavilion by the lake.  So we (my study abroad group) made an assembly line moving rocks from the river into a pile.  I guess people with building skills will do the actual building with the rocks.  We sang lots of songs.  Yay!

For lunch we had soup and another Apthapi on the rocky little beach.  I seriously struggled to eat the soup, since we didn’t get spoons.  After lunch, we played with the kids and gave them piggyback rides.  The older kids cared for their younger siblings, so even kids as young as 4 or 5 carried around the younger kids and played with them.  One little girl handed me this cute baby. (See below)

Next we had a coa, or ceremony to the Pachamama (Mother Earth).  Every part of the ceremony meant something.  The frog-shaped cookie was because frogs are the most sacred animal in Andean culture.  We each put coca leaves on the pile to represent people/things we want to pray about.  Then we burned the pile, as a way of feeding the Earth and restoring the balance between nature and humans.  According to Andean culture, humans, animals, plants, spirits, etc are all meant to live together, with no one being more important than the others.

After the coa, some people in our group went swimming in the (freezing cold) lake—I opted to watch and hang out with the village kids.  Then the men of the village did a dance with old men masks and canes.  My host mom in Cochabamba told me it was a satire of the Spanish men.  After their dance, our study abroad group sang “Here Comes the Sun” and “Lean on Me” for them.  Our program leader, Heidi, gave the village books (with Spanish and Aymara text) and 5000 Bolivianos in a ceremony as a thank-you.  Then Eliana and I hiked up to our house for our last dinner in Tocoli.

I tried to get the kids to make silly faces with me, but they mostly just laughed at my silly faces

Old man dance

Me, Rosia, Eliana, and Sixto

After giving books to everyone in the community