Well, I’m settling in for my fourth night here in Hardeman and so far I don’t have too many complaints. I actually got to hang around in Santa Cruz city for a couple of extra days to wait on some medical tests, which came back positive, re-assuring me that I actually had diarrhea…as if the 15 trips to the bathroom in one day wasn’t enough indication. But I got some meds and now here I am.
It’s kind of like moving to Bolivia all over again, except I don’t understand the Spanish as well and now it’s really hot. But all the same feelings of not fitting in and feeling uncomfortable are still here, which is kind of a bummer. I’m not sure I’m ready to go through another huge adjustment period, but I’ll have to get over that pretty quickly. It’s a whole new ballgame now without the comfort zone of my friends and allies I had during training. Now simply trying to feel comfortable is a full time job. Like I mentioned, the Spanish here is a lot trickier to understand for some reason. Perhaps my old family just spoke a lot slower, knowing that I was just a silly gringo. But here I get no such recognition. The folks here aren’t used to having silly gringos around and therefore have less sympathy. Which is kind of cool I guess, I no longer get to be babied. And the truth is, I understood a lot more today (Tuesday) than I did when I got here on Saturday, so I suppose in a month or so, I should be rocking with the language. It helps that I never get a break…but I’ve also realized that I don’t speak nearly as well as I thought I did. It’s almost impossible for me to understand what two people are saying to each other when they are conversing and I’m not involved in the conversation. And for some reason I find men much harder to understand than women. I’ve been doing a lot of blindly agreeing and laughing…having no idea what was just said to me. Which I find kind of funny but also frustrating. Asi es, poco a poco.
A little bit about my town. It’s definitely a country farming town…and I’m trying to discern what is hard about it being Bolivia and what is hard about it being a little town…neither of which I’m used to. Living in rural America for a few months would have been a nice way to ease into life in Hardeman, but all I got was Hilliard, which doesn’t do me much good. I guess the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Hardeman is that it’s dusty. All the roads are dirt, and whenever trucks loaded with sugar cane or big ‘ol tractors come rolling through town, it kicks up a bunch of dirt. It’s too hot to wear anything but sandals, which means my feet are in a constant state of filth. Don’t worry, I took Lieutenant Dan’s advice and I take good care of my feet. The good news is that the heat mandates that I shower every day, which is about the only effective way to cool off. I imagine that after two weeks of being here I will have showered more than I did throughout all of training, which works out nicely because my hair is getting longer and it likes being washed. We’ll see if I can stand the heat with my hair and beard…I’m gonna try like crazy to tough it out. Sidenote: one of the current volunteers started calling me Blackbeard, which I found really awesome. Arrrrrr!
Considering what else is around, Hardeman is pretty nice. There is a really nice health post, with a seemingly modern dentist facility and even a lab to do tests. They are building a new really big hospital as well. The school is supposedly the nicest school within four hours, and I believe it, they seem to keep it in good condition. It’s run by an Italian nun named Sister Ana…there are a lot of foreigners in town, considering it’s the middle of nowhere in Bolivia. There is a lady from Thailand, a family from Brazil, three or four Italian nuns and they tell me that there are even some Russian farmers on the outskirts of town. And now that there’s an American in town, who knows what’s going to happen. There is some wilderness around as well, although I haven’t explored too much yet…I imagine it gets pretty jungly once you get outside of town. Everyone has been very friendly so far, although I don’t think they quite understand why I’m here yet…and they don’t realize I’m staying for a while either. For some reason, when people introduce me around, they have this terrible habit of not telling me the person’s name…and that’s if I’m lucky enough for them to introduce me…usually it’s just kind of an awkward, in the same room encounter. Although tomorrow we’ve planned a little meeting for me to be introduced to some of the community members so I can talk a little bit more about what I’m here to do.
Sunday was the Bolivian Independence Day, so there was a bit of a celebration. The night before, all the kids in the school got together and walked in a little parade around town with these little lanterns they made out of tissue paper…kind of hard to explain but it was pretty cool. And on Sunday I was told we wer e going to the parade where the whole town would be there, but once we got there, I found out that I got to be IN the parade. I felt a little like Chris Farley in that Japanese game show skit with Mike Myers…”I thought they said go and see a game show…not be on a game show.” (“Kwa-ku-sur-pi-ni-ku?”) Anyway, I wish they would have told me that I was going to be in the parade in front of the whole town, I might have worn something different than dirty jeans and my “Ithaca is Gorges” t-shirt. But with my vast experience with parades, it was alright. After all, the parade was only about fifty yards long…and it was kind of nice, I thought it was going to be a long time before I got to walk in a parade again. I was walking with the other five people from the water cooperative where I work and the announcer even knew that I was from Peace Corps and announced that, which I found pretty cool. Then that night the town party was out in some field where they had big speakers set up playing music that was coming from a computer set up in the back of a dump truck…the dance floor was nothing but grass and I really felt like country boys and girls getting down on the farm. I showed off all 3 of the dance moves I’ve got up my sleeve, and that was enough to impress the folks I was with.
On the nights we don’t eat dinner at home, we usually go across the street, where they make some mean roasted chicken served with rice and French fries. It’s not Popeye’s, but they’ve got a great video jukebox with a decent amount of songs in English…and since it’s across the street, I can hear it from my house and I’ve heard some pretty random ones played the past few nights, including Michael Jackson, The Cranberries, Bruce Springsteen, Richard Marx, and even The Scorpions. It’s a good solid meal with good entertainment for Bs 6, equivalent to about 75 cents.
I see myself fitting in pretty well here in Hardeman and am confident that the more time I spend here, the more I’ll want to spend time here. With any luck, I’ll become what they call a “site rat” and hardly ever go to the city…but we’ll see.
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