Every once in a while I get these “oh my god I’m in Bolivia” moments. Today I had a particularly beautiful one: I walked into an aisle of the Cancha (the largest open air market in Latin America, or so I’ve heard) thinking I would find a small refrigerator for my new apartment and instead stumbled upon stacks of dried llama fetuses, supplies for K’oas (burnt offerings to the Pachamama) and a row of yatiris reading people’s suerte (luck) in coca leaves and tarot cards... pucha, que maravilla.
The thing about the Cancha is that there’s really no way to find what you’re looking for without asking at least 4 people and/or getting hopelessly lost for half an hour or so. On the one hand totally inconvenient. On the other hand, shopping in the Cancha inspires way more social interaction than it takes to drive to Fred Meyer, park in the parking lot, and buy everything you need in 15 minutes. You have to talk to the 4 people who give you directions, the aproned women that you inevitable bump into in the crowded stalls, the casera that bargains with you over the coveted item once you finally find it, (and maybe even throws in a “yapita” or couple of extra fruits or vegetables as a kind of thank you and insurance of future business.) You trade convenience for human contact. Yep, I’m definitely in Bolivia.
Tomorrow is my caporales dancing debut in Punata. Its the Convite, kind of like a dress rehearsal, where we’ll parade all over town with our fraternity of dancers, but in matching t’shirts rather than the whole caporales outfit. Oh, yes, except we do get to wear the huge, jingle-bell covered boots. Which have no padding so you have to stuff them with cotton to survive the 2 hours tour of leaping and twirling across the paved streets. Hopefully we’ll have the kinks worked out for the Fiesta Senior de Milagros next weekend, where well dance in full costume for people from all across the Valle.
Learning the steps has been SO much fun though. My block of dancers includes myself and 2 friends who are Japanese (peace-corps-type) volunteers and we rehearse for an hour and a half every night. The scary thing is I’m technically “comanding” the block, or calling out the steps before we do them and yelling the signals to start and stop them… and with just the 3 of us pale white foreigners, I’ve a feeling we’ll be watched by pretty much everybody. Ack.
I will post pictures and hopefully videos of this ridiculousness after the fiesta, but for now, here’s a few videos to give you an idea of what the caporales dance is like. Enjoy!
Note: i will be dressed like the guys, not like the ladies in short skirts... thank goodness!
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