Ice Cream

I don’t know how I feel about ice cream in Bolivia. As I face the window of yet another heladeria, I see the tubs of perfectly lumped ice cream huddled together under harsh lighting. The ice cream always looks more like an aggregate of bubblegum- the mounds of flavors roll in shiny hills as if a thin layer of wax rests on top. I guess it’s just too perfect. But I shrug and order two scoops anyways as my chocolate addiction bubbles to a saliva-induced fervor.

The ice cream is a welcome retreat from the sticky heat of Santa Cruz. My face sweats in a permanent shade of red, and crazy, humidified curls fly in every direction (kind of like a tomato ran into a copper-shaded dust bunny). I basically make-out with my cone as I find my way to the nearest bench, hoping to only get more intimate with my dulce de leche. As I reluctantly come up for air, I realize my friends have not followed me to the bench and now sit across the plaza. I should really feel socially excluded, but I am just happy that I no longer have to maintain a façade of being ‘clean’ and ‘wiping my face’.

Just as my cone and I start to get down and dirty, an older man approaches me and asks if he can share the bench. This is one of my favorite things about Bolivia. In the US, everyone works so hard to not share space. We love to claim things in full- as if our asses would be personally offended that someone wanted to be close to them. In Bolivia, you are weird and strange and sad and definitely stare-worthy if you are sitting alone. It’s a whole new kind of personal space.

I ask the man if he lives in Santa Cruz. He leans forward cupping his ear, then instead of waiting for me to repeat my question laughingly ganders: “Guess how old I am!”. I venture 80, he proudly proclaims “90!”, and then he is painting his life story in the space between us.

~

Alberto Gutierrez was young when he began to work in an office of the Bolivian embassy. One week, his boss- the head of the office- received an invitation to attend a conference at the United Nations in New York City. Alberto was in charge of the office for the week. Within that week, Bolivia experienced an overthrow of its government by a military dictator. Overnight, Alberto went from having a secure job in the embassy to being a representative of the fallen state. He was given two choices: flee to Germany in exile or await an inevitable assassination.

Alberto shares this with a slight grin and his large caterpillar eyebrows furrow over thick frames. He continues, revealing that he eventually followed neither of those options. Instead, he went to work in Quito, Ecuador- somehow keeping a job with the embassy. There, he met his wife and together they moved first to Buenos Aires and later to Paris so that she could study. Barely pausing, Alberto takes a big breath here and shouts, “C'est la vie!”.

I just look at him blankly, not quite sure if he is producing some new word in Spanish or if I was actually hearing French. He repeats “c'est la vie!” six more times, so by now I am very concerned that I am missing something incredibly important. I venture out a timid attempt at clarification, ¿Frances?.

He breaks into the largest smile and with all the light and infuried passion of a crazed Tinker Bell tells me that of course it is French. He tells me that c'est la vie means that this is life and that life is crazy and interesting and that we must take advantage of it all. He says that he has learned this, and that I must know the moment of his life that he will never forget:

Alberto was sitting in a plaza in Paris, waiting for his wife to come out of class. The door to the school opened and a whole stream of people flooded the staircase. One woman trips and falls, sprawling into the hurried crowd of people. The man next to her mockingly exclaims, “c'est la vie!”, or “That’s life!”. Just then, the woman rises to her feet. She throws her arms in the air to shout,

“No, I am life!”.

And there’s the moment Alberto will never forget. He shudders in small increments of nostalgic laughter and then announces we are getting ice cream.

~

I spend a few hours with Alberto and our little moment, our kind of knick-knack corner of the universe, ends with him tipping his hat before turning to walk back to the plaza. Earlier this week, I also met a French couple named Claire and Yen. I had been aimlessly walking with my friend along a road in Samaipata (a small hippie haven outside of Santa Cruz) when we found the couple backpacking to town. They had been living in Paris when they woke up to realize that they were both profoundly unhappy with their lives. Overworked, tired, confused, pressured to settle down. And so, they both quit their jobs to backpack through South America for six months- no concrete plan ahead of them.

While Claire shared this with me, I couldn’t help but think of Alberto claiming that life is interesting. I looked up to see huddled mountain tops black against the falling sun, and he sure as hell seemed to be right. Life was interesting.

Really fucking interesting.