Today, from midnight to midnight, I am not allowed to leave my housing complex. It is Census Day. Anybody caught out of their home will suffer a fine, some time in jail, or both. In Bolivia, they come around and literally count my head. I sat down with a woman this morning as she asked me what my walls were made of, if I had water supplied to the house and if so - how, if my kitchen was its own room, and about 40 other questions. She filled in each bubble carefully before proceeding to the next question and did the same for each of us living at this complex. She has 20 houses to go to today. We were #6 and she didn't finish at our house til after 11 am. Of course, certain regions that are uncountable such as the Amazon, the country, etc will simply not be included in the census. A reliable source of information for the country, or a narrow vision of city life?
Bolivia is full of days like these - the unexpected, different, distinct from my own country and makes me wonder...unique? The Tanzanian and Korean sisters across the way certainly seem just as caught off guard by them as me most of these types of days.
Two weeks ago, the sisters invited me to an inauguration of a neighborhood street with them. I asked what exactly that included, they shrugged and said, "I don't know, maybe they will cut a ribbon?". A couple of us headed over to the inauguration to find hundreds of people, dozens of security, a giant giant stage, numerous professional bands, and...EVO, the Bolivian president. He was here to celebrate the paving of a few neighborhood streets. I had wondered why our neighborhood suddenly had gotten street lights put in in less than one day...just in time for Evo's arrival. His speech as well as the president of the neighborhood and the mayor's all included detailed descriptions of how much asphalt was used, how many street lights were put in, and held promises of more water to homes and more asphalt in the neighborhood.
And of course, one of the events that affects our lives most regularly here in Cochabamba, bloqueos, were also exciting the first time or two I experienced them. These are blockades that occur whenever a group of people, the last two months its been the drivers of public transportation, decide that a presented law or policy is unfair to them. A bloqueo may last part of a day or all day depending on how negotiations go. If it is the public transportation drivers, it will be on a Tuesday, in the last 8 Tuesdays, 6 of them have had bloqueos. What exactly is it you ask? Some days it is a bunch of rocks in the street, some days it is large tree branches, some days it is 100 public buses...but the theme is that these items gather at the major intersections in town - stopping people from going much more than a mile radius from their home. It effectively stops or at least slows down any and all work for the day - including often not allowing us to get to the prisons or other ministries.
You might expect them to be violent, you wonder why nobody attempts to simply move the rocks...but they don't. And it isn't violent, not at all. In fact, near most bloqueos you can usually find a group of the drivers playing soccer to pass the day and see many men and women attempting to walk to work so they can get their pay for the day. The mood is light and cheerful. Evo himself used bloqueos and marches as a way to fight for his rights before taking presidency.
I guess this is just the way it is done.
