I again find
myself on a bus. We are five hours in, and my palms have begun to sweat as I
remember that I have no idea where I am going. We pass huge expanses of
rainforest, sheets of green licking valley walls in all directions. The highway
is dusty and through the open windows the air turns thick. I am on my way to
the Casimiro Huanca Quechua Indigenous University, traveling alone for the
first time in Bolivia.
And I’ll be on
my own for a month. I often hyperventilate at this realization. Well actually, I
straddle two types of hyperventilation, each one threatening to take over at
any given dusty turn-
Type One: GOD DAMNIT YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW
SPANISH AND YOU CHOSE TO GO MEET COLLEGE STUDENTS WHO ARE PROBABLY GOING TO BE SO
COOL AND YOU THINK YOU’RE COOL WHEN YOU SAY ‘YOU’RE COOL LIKE A CUCUMBER’. ARE
CUCUMBERS EVEN COOL?
Or Type Two, as I pause momentarily to
‘collect myself’: You came to Bolivia for
an adventure, Aly. And don’t you fucking know that Aly and adventure both start
with ‘A’? Isn’t that a sign? Get your shit together, loser.
So I straddle. The
imaginary horse I straddle is my one strong steed of faith for my time at the
university- a faith crazy enough that it just might work. A faith deliriously
foolish and lavish in lunacy. It comes up in my darkest hour of
hyperventilation:
Aly, you’re going to make friends.
~
I stand in
sweltering heat on the side of the road. I had begged the bus driver to tell me
if this was the right stop for the university. He had grumbled some sort of
throaty sniff and waved to the right. I took that as my cue.
I look up to see
a taxi stand, and my heart fills with love at the thought of entering one of my
beloved trufis. I drag my two backpacks and sleeping bag across the highway,
dripping beads of sweat like breadcrumbs behind me. When I get to the taxi
stand, I only see a series of motorcycles, or motos. I timidly ask one of the drivers if they know the best way
to get to the university. He smiles and points at his moto.
I honestly
believe he is kidding. I stand under the weight of my large backpacking
backpack (a green monster I comically attempt to drag around with my
pencil-thin noodle arms) and stare at the motorcycle. I know I am being a gringa princess, but I just think it’s
physics: there’s no way a moto could really
fit two people and all of my crap, right?
He grabs the
backpack and throws it on the motorcycle, apparently deciding that the world
has no time for my princessness. I breathe slowly and then hectically put all
of my faith into this man’s motorcycle. I squeeze into the narrow space between
the driver and my bag and clutch my other things tightly. Another driver tells
me that I must hold onto to my large backpack, so I nervously stretch myself
over the back of the moto. I lace one
arm through the straps of my bag, put my small backpack around my neck and wrap
my final limb around the waist of the driver.
The motorcycle
leaps forward and all of a sudden wind is rushing. I scramble to plant my feet
for balance and look up to see the highway caressed by sprawling canopy. I look
behind me to see rows of semi-trucks rushing forward.
And even though
I am scared as hell on my very first motorcycle ride, this becomes one of those
moments where I can only say to life: Oh fuck yeah.
~
I chose to come
to the university because I was entranced by its view on education. In the wake
of centuries of colonization under the Spanish Empire, decades of violent
oppression under US-funded dictatorships and years spent enduring Reagan’s
horrifically cruel War on Drugs, Bolivia is now beginning to recuperate its
indigenous knowledge, culture and identity. The three indigenous universities
were established as centers of community learning. They offer coursework in
indigenous languages and offer practical majors that will encourage students
from rural areas to return to their communities in order to enact projects of
change for both people and the environment. I have spent my whole life huddled
in a desperate love affair with education, so I decided to fall in love once
again at the university. I spend my first week attending classes, roaming the
university’s forested campus and shamelessly trying to make friends (like,
actually very aggressively forcing myself and my unbundled personality on a
myriad of unsuspecting strangers). It’s been an adventure.
But now I sit in
my hotel room weeping. Hard.
I haven’t wept
like this in a long time. I am split open, cracked raggedly and relentlessly. I
cry waterfalls and let the pain excavate through me, leaving me erect on the
linoleum chair. I am shaking, pulling my eyes tight and breathing large,
half-leashed gasps. This is when I get scared. I’ve never undone myself without
the subconscious comfort that someone is waiting for me in the next room. And
now I sit in this sticky heat in a hotel room very very far away from home, and
I am scared.
I know this
sounds alarming. And I know that this blog is supposed to be quaint stories of
my time abroad. I know that to you, I could be just a girl you knew in high
school. To you, I could be an old lab partner, a dear friend, a friendly wave
on campus, a sister, or a daughter. I know that you just might care about me
and that this sounds alarming. So here, I offer you, whoever you are, this: my
story ends in spectacular happiness. Warm and steady, it ends in happiness.
The sadness that
overcomes me is an accumulation of various moments that have passed during my
time abroad. But I attribute the final cracking to two people: Peter Pan and
the Universe.
I sit crying
with the final page of Peter Pan open
on my lap. Now, the novel has its problems (namely strong racist sentiments and
a rigid dependence on patriarchal gender roles), but I am taking away its
thoughts on growing up. Peter Pan has
a horribly sad ending. Wendy leaves Neverland with her brothers and the Lost
Boys and grows up. She gets married and she becomes a mother. Peter, the
forever boy, continues to visit as Wendy grows up- hopelessly in awe of her.
But one day, when Wendy is all grown up, he comes and she tells him that she
can never go to Neverland again. She is a woman now. Peter collapses in tears,
screaming that he is so angry and confused that Wendy had decided to grow up
and leave him.
You could say I
am also facing a crisis about growing up. Honestly, I haven’t really thought
about my life after Bolivia. As a young girl, I dreamt of middle school, and
then I dreamt of high school. I made all my feverish dreams about college and
finally I dreamt of making it to South America (I have always been so immensely
privileged to be able to dream). But now it’s all stopped. Of course I have
passions and hopes and vague ideas about my future, but they don’t take any
formal shape, and I am not ready for them. And Peter Pan is supposed to be a
wonderful boy and now he is crying too because he lost someone to the age-old
epidemic of growing up. I am overcome by romanticized nostalgia- she greets me
with a big friendly wave and tells me to come back. But I am already spiraling,
every moment and every minute closer to the future that I cannot picture.
Nostalgia is met
by my ruthless self-criticism and an open ‘fuck you’ to the Universe. I chose
to come to Bolivia because I wanted to experience a paradigm shift. I wanted to
understand the world differently- to shed light on dusty corners that are
violently abandoned- but I forgot to take into account how deeply I feel
things. I have seen my paradigm shift, but where others can see problems with
the world and remove them to a safe distance (using their newfound
understanding to harden a revolutionary resolve), I tremble while I fill my
heart with them, pouring until I overflow. I picture the Universe as this kind
of punk kid. He leans back in his chair with his hands clutched at the base of
his neck, resting his heavy spiked boots on my heart. Sometimes this kid has
his moments; he laughs and he grins and he sits back just enjoying life. During
these slivers of punk-rocked sunshine, I feel elation too. But then in other
moments, he becomes cold, throwing his chair to the ground and kicking a
striking blow to my heart. It’s here that I become undone and scream: WHY ARE YOU BEING SUCH AN ASSHOLE TO SO MANY
PEOPLE IN THE WORLD? All of my breath leaves in gasps. To this, he responds
wickedly by dragging me through all of my imperfect memories, my darkest
mistakes. I am left churning in reconsiderations of my own happiness.
I think it’s the
heat that eventually calms me down. I can no longer tell the difference between
tears and sweat, so I stop and wipe it all away. I am left with a thudding
feeling, somewhere between raw and utterly hard-boiled. I realize I have been
sitting in my hotel room for hours. I need to do something. I nudge the
Universe awake (he’s been snoozing dreamily this whole time) and tell him we
are going on a walk.
But I have
already made several laps around the town’s main plaza and feel like I need
something more. I pause. After a moment, it comes to me. I decide to do
something so completely cliché, not even pausing to relish in the laughable
douchness of my impulse.
I grab my copy
of Eat, Pray, Love and rush out in
search of a tub of ice cream, smiling a goddamn grin the whole way out the
door.
~
I sit reading Eat, Pray, Love in the plaza while
stuffing mounds of sweetness into my mouth and into my heart. A few days
earlier, I had fallen during a game of soccer on campus. My wound was kind of
oozing and now small buzzing insects were feasting on it. I didn’t even care
because I was eating ice cream and reading about Elizabeth Gilbert’s first
pizza experience in Italy. I had kicked my punk Universe out for the moment.
Told him to go for a walk.
After about an
hour of reading, my attention starts to wane. I start wading in and out of daydreams,
kind of wishing the Universe would come back now as I meet my first itches of
loneliness. I lean back and decide to nap for a bit. I try to be one with the
wind.
Just as I begin
to drift off, I feel the shadow of someone standing over me. I wink one eye
open and see Deborah. I met Deborah a few days ago, and she quickly became one
of my closest friends at the university.
“I’ve been
looking for you,”, she smiles.
And I can’t even
begin to tell you how good it felt to be found.
~
My time here has
mostly been characterized by small and plentiful highs. Maybe it’d be good to
share a few. I know I got a little intense there, so if you’re still here, I’d
like to thank you for sticking with me. You are really sexy.
Okay, well. To
start, the campus and the residence halls at the university are separated by a
large expanse of forest. I walk through the forest every day and have found a
small wooden desk nuzzled in all the greenery. It is all so hauntingly
beautiful, and I am so lucky to wander through it in my day-to-day life.
Next. The food
at the residence hall legit rocks. The other day I was eating warm arroz con leche and chuleta, which is a T-bone steak over rice. I was trying to cut
through the steak with a spoon and was completely failing. My friend Elizabeth
had already eaten her steak to bits and was now licking the bones clean. I attacked
my steak even harder, spurting piles of rice all over my shirt. Elizabeth took
my plate from me and promptly began to cut my steak into small pieces. I felt
like a toddler. A hot-mess toddler. She handed it back, and I was so thankful
and also kind of in awe of her magic because I mean, how the hell did she just
cut that steak?
Then, I just
need to tell the world how completely lovely my advisor Evelyn is. She is one
of the most intelligent and caring people I have ever met. During my first few
nights at the university, she let me stay in her room. I had only met her once
before, and yet, she let me, sweaty and crazed after that motorcycle ride, stay
in her home. As I slept that first morning, Evelyn woke up at the crack of
dawn. I heard her soft morning sounds and continued to doze. When she left the
room, she pulled another blanket over me, tucking me in and smoothing my hair
back. Evelyn, you deserve all of my millions of thank you’s.
And finally, I
have found a group of friends through one of the classes I have been attending.
I ate dinner with them the other night, and after, my friends Rolly and Paola
offered to drive me back to my hotel on their motorcycle. The three of us
climbed onto the moto and then Rolly
rushed us onto the dark highway. I looked up for the first time to see a
breathtaking expanse of stars. The sight of them smacked me hard in the chest.
They hit my heart so hard that I could only raise my hands high in the wind. In
this moment, I appreciated, loved, ogled, basked, bathed, admired, breathed in…
Yes, that’s the word!
I breathed in
the Universe.
