I bought a new clock a few days ago at a shop in La Paz. It is a trusty AKITAS model so I didn't mind paying 30 B's for it... By that I mean it is a bottom shelf forgery of an ADIDAS clock and 30B's was the minimum I could get away with paying. At Target (which I hate to admit missing) I would pay about $6 for something like this and I would expect it to break on the drive home. But here it costs around a working class days wage. (I could have spent less on the street but in my experience stuff sold there makes carnival game prizes seem high quality.) It 's interesting what things fall into the ESSENTIALS and the LUXURIES categories here. I suppose it is a function of the value of human labor here, which is low...




I have seen a lot of comically tragic examples of this so far. First, they have carnival rides in some of the parks and tourist spots in urban areas. With rides like mini Ferris Wheels, mini Carousels, or mini Octupus. You might have already guessed why all these things are mini. Because they are moved by hand. Usually skinny high school girl in a baseball hat. It's sort of like the wheel on The Price is Right. She puts her whole body into giving the ride a big push and it does a few rotations before she gives it another. Second the students on campus are required to do a certain number of community service hours every month depending on what kinds of scholarships they get. Everyone has to do at least a few hours a week and with about 700 students it ends up being a lot of labor. The idea is that campus maintenance, new construction, and food production are done by students. But there is more labor than work, on a daily basis there are groups of students cutting open grassy areas with machetes. They usually sit in the sun and chop away at a small section for a few min before they move over several feet. The horses that roam the town chew the grass away with more efficiency but they have less reliable schedules. (In fairness I should say that the few times I have cut grass with a machete it was very exhausting and one can hardly blame the students for their apathy toward the work.) Last, I went bowling a few months ago. It might have been the only bowling alley in La Paz. There were two lanes, more balls than pins, and one happy little man whose job it was to remove and reset the pins and to send the balls back. Although the most important part of his job might have been to dodge the above as they scattered from hard throws.



Sam and I went camping with the tourism students. We went to a nature preserve/hotel that they all had to work at as part of their studies. The place is stocked with animals that are rescued either while being exported or kept illegally as pets in Bolivia. So they aren't all exactly natives to the region but they were still very exotic and very beautiful. Most of them roamed the grounds freely. We were woken up by squawking parrots flying in and out of our shelter and two completely classless monkeys climbing on us and going in our sleeping bags.

Some of the monkeys are known to bite and were tied into the kinds os play areas you see in the zoos but I still got really close to this one.

Here is a goat that isn't his home, it's an oven.

This is one of the monkeys who woke us up. It is doing what monkeys do when you want them to be photogenic, or right before they climb on your face. You shouldn't be suprised to know he pooped on someones sleeping bag.

Thats all I have to say about that.

The Carmen Pampa Fund is sending a shipping container from Wi to Bolivia. Amongst the many things they want is camping equipment. Anything, but especially tents and sleeping bags. If you have QUALITY* used stuff or would like to contribute new stuff please contact me @ andrew.j.engel@gmail.com for details. Or go to http://www.carmenpampafund.org/wish_list.htm

*In the past this container has been used a chance to get rid of junk, please be mindful as recieving garbage from the United States is insulting.

I miss everyone, thanks for your support.

LOVE

andy