This weekend most of the Nourish crew along with some Bolivia Sostenible staff went to La Paz to celebrate the Aymara New Year welcoming the winter solstice. Maintaining traditional Bolivian culture is an extremely important part of Bolivian life. It was beautiful to see all of the people standing amidst the Inca ruins in Tiwanaku waiting for the sun to rise. We all held on to each other searching for any bit of warmth that we could gain. It was a moment where we truly felt we were in Bolivia in the midst of the culture and people who had already taught us so much about life in just this last short month. There is still so much to learn about this vast and fascinating country and only two more weeks to do it! It’s crazy to think that so much time has already past when it feels like it was just yesterday that we flew in feeling exhausted and overwhelmed. There is so much left to accomplish with our project, but just to know that we have created a foundation for future Nourish volunteers is incredibly gratifying. I think we can all say that this experience has been a lot more then we bargained for and has been challenging in ways that we didn’t expect, but it has also opened our worlds more then we could have imagined.

Here is a video of the moment that the sun rose and everyone lifted their hands to welcome in the new year and receive energy from the sun:

We stayed up the entire night to watch this sunrise. It was worth it even though (I’m not sure you can tell on the video) it was FREEZING. The way that everyone came together was supremely magical and extremely unforgettable. Today, we went back to work and went to the local school in Tiquipaya to ask a classroom of kids “what is meant to them to be Bolivian?” and have them draw a picture of what this meant to them. It is our co-worker Louise’s idea because she is doing an expedition in France with the different drawings that the children do. I decided to make a collage of some of the different kids and their responses:

 It is hard to see, but most of them say something along the lines of “I am proud to be Bolivian” or “viva Bolivia”. It was beautiful to see how proud to be Bolivian these kids were. They have so much pride for their heritage and culture and it really shows in the drawings that each of the children did. This question is also one that we don’t often ask ourselves and some people may have a hard time answering. There is no right or wrong answer, but still when I think about how I would answer this question there is a barrier between what I believe to be who I am and what the world thinks I am. When I was doing a year abroad in Italy we did a similar exercise where there were big pieces of poster paper and everyone from all over the world had to go around the room and draw on these pieces of paper that represented different countries exactly what they thought of them. Obviously, this was an exercise in stereotypes, but it also showed how ignorant people were to what the difference between reality and stereotypes that society has created are. You can never know a country like you know your own, but you can learn about a country past its stereotypes and from the people learn what their country means to them. It was an important exercise in culture and I think we all came out of it really surprised by all of the kids answers. Tomorrow, we are having a bit of a work party for Louise’s “despedida” (going away party) with food, wonderful people, and a wee bit of wine. Time is passing quickly, we are just trying to soak up every moment in this beautiful place!

Mucho amor,

Pascale, Keara, Carrie, Andrea (BU/BC Nourish Bolivia team)