One Night in Cochabamba

Readers:

We are treated once again to a guest Blog from my Democracy Center cohort, Christina Haglund. In this post Christina writes with great passion about one night in Cochabamba -- of coca, life on the street, and about the lives of the people who struggle mightily just to get by. Enjoy!

Jim

One Night in Cochabamba

I was chewing coca, and feeling a zany jolt similar to a double espresso. It is Thursday night and people are out. There are toddlers running around the plaza, children chasing the wind and infants seemingly mummied to their mothers. People are walking. I think they find it their most reliable source of transportation. I know I do.

A vacant doorway is a hard find in the early evening. All manner of faces, from the the fresh ones of children to the wrinkled ones of the old, curiously meet my eyes. People don’t shut their doors here when it gets dark. They enjoy their public space without fear, even when the moon is out.

So I hit the streets, without definite destination, my green bag of coca leaves in my hand.

The tasty treat that is chewing coca begins with a ritual of preparation. First you rip the small green leaves from their stems and then pile them in between your cheek and gum, until you start to have a look of a happy chipmunk. In quick order, the wad in your mouth produces a flavor-filled tea, created by the combination of saliva, coca leaves and legia, a sweet or salty nugget that activates the alkaloids of the coca. And the taste lasts for hours!

Like coffee, coca suppresses the appetite and contains caffeine. It is the Andean version of Starbucks, though much richer in calcium, iron, protein, and almost all of the vitamins of the alphabet. And, unlike coffee, coca is considered sacred.

I come upon two adolescent sisters, both wearing apron bibs with giant pockets for easy access to change. Each has a well-organized basket filled with cigarettes, an assortment of candy, lighters and maybe some cookies. We sit on some concrete steps. One of the girls yawns.

What time is it?

1:30 a.m.

How late can you sleep in tomorrow?

We have class at 8 a.m.

Their mother arrives. Buenas noches, I tell her. Buenas días, she corrects me. She has a basket with the same goods as her daughters. She also carries a bag filled with empty plastic bottles. She can sell a kilogram of the discarded bottles for one Boliviano. Buckets and washtubs and plastic bins are made out of the collected and returned bottles.

And the people – the ones with holes in their clothes, holes in their walls, holes in their pockets, the ones who will never make their ends meet – they will make about 15 cents for bringing in just over two pounds of plastic.

The money is in aluminum cans, she tells me. For those she gets four Bolivianos for a kilogram.

What do you do in the daylight hours? I ask her. She goes to a corner, the one where she and dozens of other women shout out offers of cheap labor services to passersby.

I wash clothes!

I clean houses!

And in your country? Could I live better? Oh how I hate this question. Yes you could, I think to myself, but only because the majority of the world struggles to survive.

Just like you.

Written by Christina Haglund