Bolivian Day

Sometimes we have days here that we like to call Bolivian days. Our experience at the funeral last month was such a moment. Monday was also another Bolivian day for me. I was supposed to go in to my school to meet with my tutor to go over my thesis which he had 3 weeks to read. I got there and of course he had not even picked it up. Then I was planning on heading up to Capellani to work on my research when the two guys who work in the area told me they were headed that way if I would just wait a little I could get a ride with them. Great! I don't have to hike up and it will save me some time. But the hours rolled by and finally at 12:30 they were headed out for lunch and told me, "oh, we decided to just go tomorrow." Agh! That is when I realized this would be a Bolivian day. But it wasn't over yet. I headed out on my own and finally arrived in Sipe Sipe, the town at the foot of the mountain I have to hike up. Normally there I wait a few minutes for a car that drives me up to the end of the road where I have to walk from there. This day the wait was over an hour. Finally when the car did drive by I got in with an old widow who was form Capellani and heading home. So when we got to the end of the road she asked me if I would accompany her. By now it was 3pm and I was planning on hiking up the river the way I normally do to save time. But she didn't want that. She wanted to go up following the road which takes an hour longer than the river. But to refuse her would be disrespectful and I thought, who knows? Anything is possible on a Bolivian day. So off we went. Two hundred meters later we stopped for her to chat for half an hour with her friend and I knew this would be a long hike. It turned out to be 4 hours (it usually takes me 1.5) of walking and resting and trying to communicate in Quechua and I finally arrived after dark at our destination.

The next day I wanted to find a few of my informants to clarify a few things. I didn't have much to ask, but the way things work here I am happy to get one or two good conversations or interviews a day. But on this morning I woke up and one of the men I was looking for had come to the school to talk to the profesora, so I invited him in for tea and got him done. Then I find out another in is charge of school breakfast that morning and he came and I talked with him too. Another that lives near the school had supposedly gone down the mountain for the day, but as I was heading out I found him coming back up as he had changed his mind. So we stopped and talked too. Then other, who lived a long walk away and I didn't think I would see this week happened to be at his field near the school feeding his cows where he had them pastured for the week, so I got to talk to him too. I have never been able to get four interviews in one day, and this day I had four before 10am! The other two I needed to talk to I got to on my way down the mountain the next day. When I thought about it I realized that that had been a Bolivian day too. When you live here you never have any idea how your day will end up.