What You Have Done to One of My Brothers...

A trip to Bolivia

by Bernice Staub, St Gall, Switzerland

In the autumn I spent four weeks in Bolivia. I had taken the decision to go on my own in order to be independent in the planning of my stay. But that decision was the only one I took on my own because from the very beginning I met people who accompanied me on my travels.

Trying to find a job in Europe

In Sao Paulo, a town of 16 million inhabitants in Brazil, I have to wait for six hours for my onward flight. Three women, who have also been travelling on their own, are sitting next to me. One of them, a young woman whose Bolivian father met her mother in Switzerland while travelling as a musician, acts as an interpreter. The other two women, between 40 and 50 years old, talk about their lives. Both of them have been working in Spain for several years, one in Madrid, the other one in Sevilla. They work as housemaids, do the cleaning, washing and cooking in other families' homes abroad, while their own families remain in La Paz. One of them, whose youngest son is only seven, sees her children just once a year. The two women live on very little and send the money they save home. There are very few jobs in Bolivia so the women who can get hold of enough money for the trip abroad leave the country.

It took me some time to realise the scale of the problem facing the people in Bolivia. On my flight back to Europe, sitting right at the back of the plane, I could see so many of them: The young Bolivian woman nervously memorizing sights she wants to see in Sevilla in case the Spanish customs officer inquires about the purpose of her stay; an elderly woman, who tells me that she has received "an invitation". Does one also need an invitation to enter Switzerland? She is from the northeast of Bolivia, from the jungle, and wears mourning. And then the woman who has a laughing fit after seeing the hand dryer in the toilet because she has never seen anything like it before. The woman sitting next to me on the other side of the aisle, looking rigidly ahead, her nails dug into the seat, who says she is going on a three-week holiday. And another young Bolivian woman, who laughs a lot, tells me bluntly that she wants to try to work illegally in Spain. She wants to know how long I think a love relationship can survive when both live such a distance from one another. Her boyfriend left for Mexico the day before to try to get across the border to the United States and find work on the plantations there. I can't help fearing that these women will be miserable in the sometimes rather frosty Europe environment.

A loathing for North America

My first destination is Cochabamba. A city of 520,000 inhabitants at an altitude of 2,600 meters, surrounded by fertile valleys, it is a trading centre for many goods with a huge market called Cancha. Here I want to attend a school to learn Spanish. Approximately 20 students are there when I arrive: someone from Japan, a few Germans and a number of Swiss people. The Japanese man wants to become a translator after finishing the school, while all the others want to work somewhere in the country and help. There is enough work for volunteers. The growing unrest in the country begins to upset some of their plans. Some routes are becoming unsafe, some areas too dangerous for a stay. So plans are being rearranged with the help of the couple who run the school. In the areas in which coca plants are grown, any white person is regarded as a North American. A loathing for the United States can be felt everywhere. We learn to identify ourselves quickly as Europeans.

I am staying with a family in the suburbs near the school. A Catholic priest established this neighbourhood thirty years ago. The houses were built by a cooperative. Former miners from Potos�who had lost their jobs moved here with their families. My family is a typical poor middle-class family. The 60-year-old mother of the house does the cooking for the whole family. The two adult daughters work as nurses in the city. The mother washes white hospital laundry in the yard by hand using cold water. One of the daughters has three children, and her husband is on the dole. He also went to Spain to find a job, but returned three months later without any money and is now hiding from the relatives from whom he borrowed his flight money.

Thirty per cent of Bolivians lead similar lives. They are not starving, but any stroke of fate can easily throw them out of their stride. Every night there is a programme on a private TV channel in which people can ask the viewers a favour: A man asks for a small truck. His old vehicle is beyond repair, but he needs one in order to transport goods that he wants to sell in the city. His wife and children depend on his earnings. A family asks for 600 dollars so that the father of the family can get a heart operation. This is an enormous amount of money in a country where a primary school teacher earns less than 100 dollars a month. Another man asks for a blood-donation because his wife is to be operated in the city hospital the next day. A mother asks for 200 dollars to pay for a vital operation needed by her baby.

Bitter poverty and kindness

60 per cent of the population live in bitter poverty. They lack food and clothing. Every afternoon I visit the market. Here, women sit behind their wares, lovingly arranged piles of tomatoes or potatoes. In Bolivia there are 270 different types of potatoes, adapted to the severe conditions in the Altiplano. Some women are trying to sell only a handful of onions. Toddlers sleep beside them on the street. In the crowd I almost step on a bundle of cloth, in which a baby lies wrapped up. The children relieve themselves in the street, their clothes are ragged and dirty. The poorest of the women, who have nothing that they can sell, sit around lethargically, begging, their children crawling in the dust near them.

While sitting in a caf�with my classmates in the evening, we are often approached by beggars. We never give them anything. Then I notice that a Bolivian couple at the next table offers a begging mother something to drink A little later the woman who runs the caf�shows a tousle-headed young boy into the kitchen. A musician, whom I meet after a concert, gives his half-full bottle of coke to a child in the street. When eating out with my host mother, she gives a boy the bread that has been served with our spicy tongue dish.

Cure the curse at the root? or emergency aid?

Our headmaster tells me about a poor woman in Potos�who wanted to take her husband a simple meal while he was at work. On her way, at a bus station, she saw a woman who was even poorer than herself, and shared her meal with that woman. This is Bolivian reality: There is a solidarity that exists and lives among the people, and that is why people can survive. The proceeds from the sale of Bolivia's riches go to foreign countries. For the solidarity among people there is a word in Quechua, a language of the Indigenes of the Altiplano: khayay. It is one of the three central concepts in the tradition of the Andes: ruway (to work), khuhya (to act in solidarity), and phuyllay (to free the mind from the body, so that one no longer feels the need for it, for example from day-long dancing or festivities)

I believe we Europeans often feel we should not give anything to beggars because it would not help them anyway, because it is a bottomless barrel since there are so many beggars. I start to become uncertain. Of course it is better to cure the curse at the root. But even if those with power in our world let us, how long will it take until the world changes? Isn't this attitude just a pretext for us not to be confronted with suffering?

Thick veil of discouragement

From Cochabamba I travel on to Santa Cruz. In the department of Santa Cruz there are several road blocks, and the political situation is less tense than in the highland. It is on the edge of the jungle, and the climate is subtropical. I visit a warm-hearted friend of a friend from Switzerland and her family. She worked illegally in Switzerland for four years and returned last summer because she was worried about the development of her three adolescent children. The two younger ones are as shy as young farm cats and do not exchange a single word with me. The hygienic situation is bad. No kitchen, an earth-closet, and only one water-tap in the middle of the yard. Since the father has a job, the mother wants to spend all her time with her children, whom she has not seen for such a long time. When the father is at home, he watches TV all the time, although a great deal needs to be done in and around the house. No door closes properly, no window fits its frame and none of the walls have been plastered. A heavy shroud of discouragement seems to lie over everything.

A small sum in Europe, a fortune in Bolivia

Near Santa Cruz I can take a look at relief organizations of the Salesian Order founded by Don Bosco. The padres have worked for thirty years in the poor neighbourhood of the small town situated an hour's drive from Santa Cruz.

What have they built within this short period of time! They initiated the foundation of a cooperative that builds houses in the area. A house built of stone, with kitchen and bathroom, two rooms and a large terrace costs only 7,000 dollars. We are going to look at one of the houses inhabited by a large family and paid for by a donor from Italy. This donor is "godparent" to one of the nine children and pays approximately 300 Euros a year for a grant to cover the costs of the child's school-uniform and books. It was in his capacity as "godparent" that he learned about the difficulties of the family.

The situation makes me think of a colleague in a hospital in Switzerland who recently had a spacious house built. The time that was spent on choosing the building site, the many considerations that were made concerning the type of heating system and the insulation of the roof! The time he and his wife spent on choosing each and every detail, such as the bathroom floor and the worktop in the kitchen! Now the two of them live in a house that would offer space for ten people. I am not saying that he is not hospitable, and after a hard day at the hospital he deserves a bit of luxury. Nevertheless, a bitter feeling stalks me.

Another visitor of the padres is an Italian who has been involved in obtaining such grants for many years. She knows each donor family and almost every child that receives a grant. She explains to the mothers that the donors are not rich people, that they have to work for the money that they receive. The mothers have got the point.

Aid to undernourished children

A group of women volunteers, the Damas Salesianas, from the middle or the upper class, and usually supported by spouses in well-paid jobs, organize the charity work. They run a centre for preventive medicine in which vaccinations and free medical consultations are carried out, and in the summer they opened a "Comedor", a building in which poor children are offered free lunches. From time to time, the ladies go from house to house in the neighbourhood looking for undernourished children and inviting them to join them. When the children come there for the first time, they are examined and weighed. They receive a card with a number, which they show every time they come. This makes it possible to check how often they turn up. Their weight is checked regularly, and many of them have already put on weight since the summer. About one hundred children turn up every midday. They are taken care of by only two women. What a mess! Many children arrive one or two hours early, they are all around me, they teach me how to peel oranges the Bolivian way and laugh when they see how clumsily I try to follow their instructions.

Beto, an old man with a guitar, joins us and sings for them. The meal, which is prepared by two stout, big-hearted women in a small kitchen, is balanced and substantial. I would need ten hands to help serve the meals. There are disputes to be settled, and some children need to be encouraged to eat their meal. I sit next to a small girl who is still sitting in front of a full plate, while the others around her are leaving the table. "What is your name?" I want to know, but she does not reply. "What things on your plate do you like most?" Other children come to help me and repeat my question. But the girl speaks to nobody. So I start to feed her, which she does not mind. I feed her in silence every day, and at the end of the week she has begun to finish her plate faster than her elder sister, who sits beside her. With pride she stretches and smiles.

"Come back"

It is my last morning, has rained the whole night and has finally cooled off a little. We are driving to a children's home that is run by nuns of the Salesian Order. It is a tough journey, the roads are sodden. The home is the largest centre for undernourished children in Bolivia. 40 babies and small children are being provided for here for a period of several months. Their mothers are young, sixteen or seventeen years old, and in most cases have come from the Altiplano to the Santa Cruz area, hoping to find both a milder climate and a job. The children are looked after by several nuns, a few nurses and sometimes by trainees from foreign countries. They bob up and down in baby seats side by side and do not cry. In one room the babies lie on mattresses on the floor. This enables them to crawl a little without hurting themselves. Two older girls are severely disabled. They were abandoned there by their parents. The older toddlers, in baby walkers, rush towards us and cling to our clothes. A boy snatches my camera bag and does not want to return it any more. An elderly nun waits for me outside under an umbrella and accompanies me on the short walk to the car park.

"Are you a paediatrician " "No, I train nurses." "Are you staying here for a while, can you help us?" "No, I'm flying back tomorrow." The others are already waiting in the car. "But I would love to help, maybe next year ..." "So go now, and come back. Do you hear me? Come back!"

Donations: Vereinigung Don Bosco Werk, Jugendhilfe Lateinamerika, CH-6215 Beromnster, Swiss post office account number: 60-28900-0