Eating corn stalks and drinking chicha – an intro to the Bolivian countryside
I woke up in the middle of the night having to pee, but didn’t want to go outside into the cold, so I laid there a while, thinking about my stolen bankcard…I hadn’t yet called the bank and was sure my thieves had used it to buy all sorts of extravagant things. I fell back asleep and we woke up a short while later to head out to the country, but not without me calling in my stolen bankcard first. Bank One, who is now Chase assured me that no one had used my card, which was a relief, but they offered no assistance in getting a card to me quickly. Any way you can send it to Bolivia? “No, we can only send it within the US.” Any way you could expedite the service since now it has to go through two mailing processes before it gets to me…you know, since I’m in Bolivia? “Well, it takes 2 days to make the card, and then it goes out regular mail.” And no way to expedite this? “No.” Thanks, Bank One/Chase, your customer service is superb. “Don’t mention it.”
Enough about that, though…I quickly forgot about this slight inconvenience during the next few days, which were probably my most memorable experience on this trip so far, 6 months in. I thank Elvis a million times over for taking me out here…
We packed in to a micro (a van/bus) out to the country…I talked to a few people on the way out there. We got out at some town, and I assumed it was where we were going, but no. “Get in here,” Elvis said, pointing to a taxi, so I did and he disappeared. He returned with breakfast, a little baggie filled with fries and sausage, covered in ketchup and mayonnaise, and supplied with toothpick to eat with…you take what you can get when you don’t know where you are; it was pretty good. We headed further into the country on some rough road, paved with big stones. “Stop here, please,” Elvis asked…we were in the middle of nowhere. There were a few mud houses around, but we weren’t near any sort of town. “This is my family’s country home” he explained. He pointed across the street to an old couple in front of another mud house. “Those are my grandparents. They don’t speak any Spanish, only Quechua…you won’t understand a word. It should be funny.” Yeah.
We walked to the first mud house off the road and went in. I was introduced to Elvis’s aunt (who is actually not related…all close family friends are aunts or uncles), who hugged me and gave the double kiss on the cheek. Then I met his father, who gave me some strange hug; his arms embraced my arms, kind of like a 1/2 hug. I felt like I did something wrong there, but later learned that this is a normal hug here. We talked for awhile about the state of Bolivia and the hopes that everything will improve with Evo as president. He brings hope to the poor class (which is quite huge) of Bolivia in that he will eliminate the corruption here and provide more opportunities. We also talked about coca, which is an integral part of the Andean culture, and has been for thousands of years.
I was offered a drink called chicha, which I had heard about. It’s a home-brewed fermented corn drink…I can’t really describe the taste, but it wasn’t bad (wasn’t the best thing I’ve ever drank, either). Everyone had some, and they were spilling a bunch on the floor (no matter since it was made of stone/mud). I saw the kitchen, which was beyond rustic…a wood-burning set-up for a stove, cast-iron pots, and a whole chicha brewing area. There was also a whole pen of guinea pigs in there…I heard they eat these. “Oh yeah, they’re very good,” assured Elvis. “You don’t eat them in the States?” No, children have these as pets.
We walked outside and I got a tour of the little farm…there were 2 pigs, a small herd of sheep, 2 ducks, some chickens and cows, one or two dogs, and a whole bunch of little kittens running around. They brought me out an ear of corn (which was different than our corn) and then a huge bowl of boiled potatoes and a macaroni salad…I couldn’t eat it all!
Elvis was complaining about a toothache and told his dad about it. I was told that his dad was an adventist…he had died once for 12 hours and from what I gathered was told to return to Earth. To cure Elvis’s toothache, he did some sort of ritual thing; he blessed Elvis with the sign of the cross and then took some sort of paper (I think there was something inside) and rubbed it over his cheek outside the aching tooth, around his face and entire upper body. Then he took the paper outside and burned it in the adobe oven they use to bake bread.
We then walked over to meet Elvis’s grandparents. His grandmother (Mamita) was sitting on the side of a little river (an irrigation canal that had been trenched from the local river), washing clothes. Elvis said something in Quechua, and I went to her and said hello in Spanish. She took my hand and smiled at me. Elvis explained I was from the United States. “United States!” she said (it must be the same in Spanish and Quechua). “Sí” I said…she talked some more in Quechua and I didn’t understand a word, so I started laughing, looking back at Elvis for some sort of translation, which he did not provide, all the while still holding hands with Mamita. She laughed too, her gold teeth gleeming from her mouth, and we squatted there for a while, laughing and holding hands. I met Elvis’s grandfather too (Papito), and he gave me another one of those half-hugs. He was just as nice, though a little more on the quiet side.
“Let’s go look out back,” Elvis said. I asked him how to say goodbye in Quechua and tried to say it; I could tell it was totally wrong by the laugh I got in return. The countryside was just beautiful…we were in the mountains, which could be seen in every direction; a valley dipped down just behind Mamita’s land. Elvis went into the corn field and ripped out a stalk and peeled it. “Here. Eat this.” A corn stalk? “Yeah. It’s very good.” I bit into it and a sweet water filled my mouth, though the stalk itself was kind of stringy. Do I swallow it? “No,” he laughed. “You just take the juice and spit the rest out.” So I spit the rest out onto the ground and took another bite. I was eating corn stalk, and it was good.
“Here. Try these. They paint your mouth.” They were little berries, and I put a few in my mouth. They weren’t very good. Am I supposed to eat these? “No, spit them out.” Well, I had already chewed them up, so I spit out a mess of purple mush. Elvis laughed again. Is my mouth purple? “Uh huh.” We continued on like this for a while, me trying different fruits and herbs from the garden. While we were making the rounds, we ran into his sister herding sheep. “Shhh…shhh…” That’s the noise they make to get the sheep to go where they want, and the sheep do a really great job of listening.
We climbed a tree and hung out in fields a while longer and headed back to Elvis’s house. His mother was home, and she welcomed me to her house; she was just as cute as Mamita, dressed in her traditional Bolivian clothes. Elvis picked up a fruit called a tuna (I guess this can also be called tuna in English, and comes from the prickly pear plant). I wanted to try it so he gave me instructions on how to peel it (they normally have thorns like a cactus, but this one didn’t). I did it completely wrong, and his whole family was laughing at me. Why can’t I do it this way? (Because of the thorns.) I still ate the fruit, which was pretty good…you eat the seeds and all.
We were getting ready to leave to go into town for the festival. We had drank some more chicha, and I had to pee before we left. Where’s the bathroom? “Out behind the house in the trees…can you do that?” Elvis asked. Yeah, sure…no problem. I should have figured there are no bathrooms in mud houses.
Tags: Bolivia, Tag Index
Tania