I saw a drag show two days ago. It was part of the “anniversary” of the nursing department. They also had a dance, played soccer and musical chairs, and hazed new students by making them crawl through mud in an orange plastic tube with a sign that said something like intestinal parasites. Just one more reason Bolivia kicks USA's ass. The annual celebration in the POLS department at UWRF was a wiener roast followed by a lackluster volleyball game.

I mentioned something about cross-dressing before in this blog. I hate to come back to it but it’s an interesting part of the culture. First of all I should say it’s really popular, street performers do it, it’s on TV, and the students have featured it a few times before. Mostly it’s done for comic value, after all can you think of anything funnier than a spiky haired guy in clip-on earrings and a skirt, who looks all too comfortable in heels and makes most of the girls jealous of his legs as he’s being chased around by either a big breasted cowboy or a “man” with a permanent marker beard wearing a suit that only half hides shapely hips as he grabs his crotch and walks so shoulder heavy you’d think his spine was fused.

I don’t know much about psychology but I’m pretty sure there is interesting research about sexual outlets for men in super macho countries, which would probably have something intelligent to say about why being left by your girlfriend can be seen as just lacking control over her but wearing fake boobs and lipstick is cool.

Anyway, Sister Jean doesn’t like it and won’t go, she says it’s sexist and disrespectful to women. Maybe shes right, but the girls cross dressed too and did their best to make macho guys look like tools, for whatever reason this never gets as much of a reaction and it is definitely viewed as just a supplement to the real action.

Yesterday Sam and I became the first semi-pro English speaking radio advertising icons in the Coroico area, or so we were told. One of our old students has a restaurant and thought there was an untapped English speaking market that he could corner by putting out an ad in their native language. I don’t know if it’s true or not but we’ll see. There are certainly plenty of English speaking tourists that come through here. We were paid with a few glasses of cold beer, made more RICO because we drank them at about 10:00 am.

We showed up with no script, no reservations, and no idea what was going on. In about 15 min we had written and recorded in two takes what will be the vocal track for a heavily produced typical Latin ad - Lots of sound effects, fast crazy music in the background, and at least one incredibly obnoxious voice (MINE!).

Okay, that’s all

LOVE

andy

Some volunteers and I with a few of the girls from the PRE. Note the girl who brought a stuffed animal for the pic.

One of the classes I teach is with the schools pre-university students. They are a swollen group of over 80 kids completing a curriculum that stands somewhere between minimum high school standards and college generals. For English they are divided into four groups but generally they have all their classes at the same time in the same low ceilinged closed up classroom that unmercifully overlooks the fútsal court.


Before the semester started, around 200 kids came and took an entrance exam, none passed but the 85 highest scores were accepted to the “PRE”. After the successful completion of the pre-curriculum they will all move into one of the other 5 “carreras” Veterinary, Agronomy, Nursing, Teaching, or Eco-Tourism.


I like the PRE, they remind me of kids at a summer camp experiencing a lot of new exciting stuff for the first time, sometimes full of excitement and wonder and other times just frustrated and homesick. Most of all they just seem young. They illustrate the conflict that exists in all the UAC students, a dichotomy between being emotionally young in many fundamental ways while having lived through incomprehensibly (for us anyway) difficult things. These are kids that don’t like to walk at in the dark because they believe there are ghosts and ghouls out at night. Kids who giggle in class and draw dirty pictures in their notebooks (carry around stuffed animals {told you so}). Many of them however have worked in subsistence agriculture as long as they have been physically able. They have seen preventable illness take friends or family members. They have cared for younger siblings, cooked, cleaned, and otherwise supported their families more like Cinderella than anyone else I can think of, minus the part about not being loved which depends on the family.


I don’t want to get carried away now… but really they are sort of the antithesis to my brother Nathan.


Anyway just like Nate they are very loveable.

Don't get jealous but this is their bathroom.

I said the group was a little too big, last semester there were only like 60 of them. Needless to say just finding enough beds has been a challenge. Below you can see a typical dorm room the girls have two of these. The classroom that felt crowded with 60 has the qualities of a beehive with 80+.


Most of these students are the first generation in their family to go to college which probably isn’t a surprise. But what is a surprise is that most students in the PRE are girls. I think there are only about 25 boys, or less than one third. The school as a whole has more female students but not by this margin. This kind of gender imbalance exists in the US at many institutions but it’s really interesting to see it here. Remember that college education being available to the general population is sort of a novel idea here. I wouldn’t dare speculate what it means, but many development experts including Greg Mortenson (Three Cups of Tea) who has been building schools in Central Asia for a decade and a half, say that educating girls is one of the biggest steps a country can take to reducing poverty and creating real social change.


SO maybe I would speculate that is a pretty darn good thing (and by the way we do accept donations).


In this time of economic crisis be thankful your diet includes meat!

Thanks for the time,

LOVE

andy