Recent Adventures Part I: La Paz y El Alto

They call La Paz un gran hueco, a big empty basket. It is an enormous valley in the Andes. The center of the city rests over 1,000ft below the rim where El Alto makes up more than 1 million of the inhabitants of this area. El Alto, the so called rim ofthis bakset, has grown exponentially in the last 20 yers by immigration in from el campo. This land up above seems infinitely expanisve. There is hardly any access to water or electricity and it seems that in reality if you just squished all the people in the countryside together and hardly changed their routines or customs it would becom this sort of coutnry-city mix. The world feels extrememly different 12,000ft in the air, I often felt like I was drowning just trying to breath in a bit of oxygen. The specificity of this city is also quite tangible. The poverty and crime in El Alto ar enoromous social hurdles and many of the people here struggle on a daily basis to feed themselves and their children. In places of xtreme struggle it seems there are often counterparts of equal beauty. While in La Paz last week, Emily, a delightful and hardworking young woman from South Carolina, jumped on a microbus and wound our way up to El Alto to take some footage of a children playing music and dancing at a cultural center that we had heard about. We eventually found it hiden in a small building of the road where dogs were figthing, children sitting on hte stoops of their hubles casitas, the sun beating down ith undesirable force. The cultural center opens its doors to all the children of El Alto, Many of whom line on the streets and have had to leave elementary school to work (which could be anything from selling gum and cigarettes on the street, yelling out prices and destinations of the micros to robbing...just to make ends meet, narely). I as amazed by these children. They greeted us joyfully and were excited t oplay the songs they had been learning. One young boy told me that he loved music for the rhythm. He grabbed my hand and brought me to the patio where he began to dance and asked if I would film him.
Bolivia is a very unique country in many ways - historically, politically, culturally. The longer I m here the harder it is to reconcile class and race discrepencies that not only exist between Bolivia and the rest of the world but also in between social groups in country. The intensity of different experiences and concepts of life are potent and often feel like insurmountable barriers. Last week a woman wouldn´t sell me bananas because I am a gringa. I left her shop with a stomachache but ultimately can´t justify feeling sorry for myself in the face of the struggle that woman and many others I have met here eal with every day. It is equally unhelpful to feel sorry for those who live that struggle. It is not the first time I have felt this way whiel traveling and I suppose what I have learned before and am learning again is the value in bearing witness to these kinds of challenges and hoping that good intentions can carry you at least part of the way to some form of understanding.
To be continued...