So things have been kind of hectic the last two months. My program basically traveled all of October, and I’ve spent November creating a documentary film. It’s about the precarious situation surrounding water in Cochabamba and the water bottle companies that make money from it. One thing I’ve learned is that many people in the Southern part of the city still live like they did out in the country before they migrated to Cochabamba. So here’s a little bit of what I know about life in the country, from when I stayed with an indigenous family back in mid-October:

Out in the countryside, there really are "mountains beyond mountains." I always thought the tree on top of this hill was a llama.

My stay with the indigenous family in the country was one of those experiences that you can’t walk away from without feeling different. I guess it’s a mix of good and bad. I saw a lot of things that I never thought I’d see with my own eyes.  I only spent three full days living without electricity, bathrooms, and tables; but after I got done adjusting to this life, I wasn’t ready to go back to the city.

So here´s how it went: After taking an incredibly shaky five-hour bus ride out of Cochabamba along a rocky road through the mountains, then being crammed into a pick-up truck with a bag full of bread and crossing a bunch of rivers, I was one of the last two people to be dropped off with a country family.

There wasn’t a bunch of people waiting out front to greet their gringita (white girl) like I’d seen families do earlier. There were just a bunch of scraggly trees, spiny bushes, and litter scattered in the front yard. The program assistant Patti called my name and I climbed out of the truck. An 11-year-old girl wearing what looked like mismatched 80´s clothing came up and took my backpack. I looked behind me at Patti and she said she’d be back the next day to check up on me and drop off water. Then the pick-up left.

I felt awkward because I was wearing clean jeans and a dress as a shirt. And because I had a big backpack and a purse with two cameras in it. The girl put my stuff down in a room with a dirt floor and dirt walls and some sacks lying by the door. Through my lame attempts at striking up conversation, I found out her name was Isabel and the three-year-old boy following us was her brother Willie. He only spoke the indigenous language Quechua so I never understood what he said, except for when he screamed misk’i (candy) at me. After we put my stuff down,  Isabel and I left her family’s compound so she could show me the family’s fields.

The family´s home was more like a compound than a straight-up house.

The room with my stuff ended up being the room I slept in. It had a table where Isabel did her homework and a mud bench lining one of the walls. There wasn’t anything over the windows or a door so the room was open to the elements. Isabel and her family slept in the room behind it. Next to this mud building was an open area covered by a roof of sticks with sheep skins and knitting stuff. Across from the bedrooms was a mud building with potatoes on the floor and small amounts of vegetables in plastic baggies. To the right of that was another mud building with sheep skins and things hanging from a rope. The whole compound was walled in and there was an open space in the middle where you could sometimes find meat hanging from a line. You had to walk through a wooden gate to get to the kitchen, which is a small mud building on its own. Also, there was absolutely no electricity or a bathroom. You just had to pick a spot and squat.

Before dinner, Isabel took one of the candles that I brought and did some of her homework by candlelight. That’s when the reality of where I was really began to hit me. At dinner, the family sat on low stools on the kitchen’s dirt floor and ate off of plates resting on the ground. Isabel’s mom groped around for the meal with only a flashlight and a dim fire in the corner. I think I found a chicken liver with my food, which was mainly rice and potatoes, but luckily it was too dark to see for sure. I remember how Isabel’s dad categorized me as “one of THOSE people” who eat at tables, and then the family tried to send me to eat by myself at the table in the bedroom building. I tried to convince them that I didn’t need a table, but Isabel went and found me a bucket to put my plate on.

I went to bed at around 8 p.m. that night because I didn’t know what else to do.  I got into the  sleeping bag that I borrowed from my host family, which was meant for a child and only came up to my chest.  I slept on top of a metal bed frame with goat skins and a blanket under my sleeping bag. After I went to bed, Isabel stood over me for a few seconds and then threw one of her family’s homemade blankets over me. I didn’t sleep with my program recommended bug net and I ended up being fine, but I dreamed about bugs biting me.

Isabel and the other kids usually try to balance on this pipeline on their way home from school. The pipeline also makes a good seat.

Every morning I helped Isabel make fry bread. We rolled out dough into circles with our hands and she cooked them in a pan of oil over the fire. We also drank tea out of thin wooden bowls and I never saw anyone use cups.

The first morning I woke up before Isabel around the time the sun came up (6 a.m.) because I thought I’d be working in the fields,  helping to cook and doing chores during my time in the country. Except…Isabel’s mom, who only knows a few words of Spanish, didn’t want me to help her with anything. So I never ended up doing any work, which was kind of silly because I was happy to help with whatever I could.

Instead, I went to school with Isabel. During our walk there we ran into her cousins and Joey, one of the guys from my group who was staying with their family. The kids told us that the school building is one of the few bastions of electricity in the area.

To our surprise, Joey and I wound up teaching the kids in Isabel’s class for an hour because the teacher said he had to go talk to community members. Joey and I both blanked on what to do (the class we were supposed to teach was natural science) so we tried talking about outer space and planets before we realized that the kids were actually studying the human body. Then Joey began teaching the kids how to say body parts in English.

After school (which only lasted a few hours) the kids wanted to go swimming. We walked a little ways and then hiked downwards off the road and swam in the river in our underwear. The funny thing was the rocks lining the river were covered in mud under the water, so if you sat down on one of them the mud got on your underwear and it looked like you crapped your pants. Isn’t that attractive? The kids liked to get out of the water and cover themselves in the rocky sand on the opposite river bank. They would lie on their chests with their heads sticking up, which made them look like seals.

Every evening, the goats made their way back to this pen made of sticks and bristles.

Later that afternoon we went exploring the mountains around Isabel’s house. Her family grows potatoes, onions, and corn and they also have lime trees. The kids usually ate big yellow limes, but I only managed to finish part of one even though I was really thirsty because it was too sour.  Isabel’s family also has chickens, goats, cats, two dogs and a puppy. I also saw a lot of sheep on the nearby hills and the occasional cow roaming down the dirt road.

One of the gifts I gave Isabel was a bunch of noise-making balloons. She really loved inflating them and watching them shoot into the air. The animals were terrified of them. Isabel started bringing the balloons with us during hikes so she could shoot them off and startle animals. She gave a couple balloons to her cousins and we could hear the balloons shrieking through the air on the hill across from us.

That night after dinner I followed Isabel and her mom to the goat pen. One of the females had injured her leg and was resting away from the others with her calf. Isabel and her mom giggled and peed into a bucket, and then her mom rubbed the urine on the goat’s leg. I just kept thinking about the Dual Durvival episode where the hippy guy says, “Are you sure you don’t want me to piss on your hat? I’m doing you a favor!”

Our secluded swimming spot.

The following afternoon Isabel and I left Willie at home and we hiked up the mountain right behind the house. It was really prickly and rocky and I slipped a bunch of times when we began climbing down the other side. We followed a set of railroad tracks for a while and walked through a cave, where Isabel threw rocks at bats, before we started scaling down a really steep part of the mountain. It was probably the riskiest thing we did out in the country. Sometimes we walked on a very narrow path–only big enough for one foot at a time–while we held on to the rocks and bushes we passed by and tried to avoid prickles.

Eventually we got down to the rocky ledge of the river and walked along the shore for a while until we got to a place deep enough to swim. Along the way we passed a cave where a pair of eagles lived. The rocks burned our feet when we took off our shoes. Isabel ran to the river and jumped right in, but I put my feet in first. The water was turquoise and uncomfortably chilly. Eventually I slid/jumped into the water. It felt so refreshing and the current wasn’t too swift. Isabel and I slid down a few mini waterfalls and tried to swim up-current. She found a really big piece of bark from a tree and we used it as a boat. It didn’t work very well with both of us, but it was kind of fun. I really enjoyed floating on my back and looking up at the cliffs surrounding us. We were the only ones in that great big space.

After we finished swimming we climbed up one of the big cliffs to get back to Isabel’s home. I had to take a bunch of breaks but the view was really neat. I lost the lens cap for my camera when Isabel and I were walking along the ledge of a waterfall that emptied into the river below. I was thinking about falling and keeping my balance when I spooked myself, which made the lens cap fall out of my hand and roll down into the waterfall. I felt bad about leaving gringo evidence in that beautiful landscape.

My camera also ran out of batteries at that point and we saw some really neat things. For instance, the  sunset was hauntingly beautiful that night. I want to paint the image—it was amazing! Blue hills in the distance, pink sky, a single star, and Isabel’s dad below in his potato field burning tree stumps. It was great.

After beating their clothes against river rocks until they were perfectly clean, the family hung their clothes up to dry on these spiny bushes.

Aside from the river that Isabel and I swam in, there was a brook next to her house where the family gets their water and a large stone riverbed with a trickle of water.  I helped Isabel’s mom and her aunt wash clothes in the riverbed one afternoon. They used a turquoise bar of soap with finger grips to lather up the clothes. Then they rubbed out the stains and beat the clothes against the smooth slabs of rocks next to the water. While we washed the clothes, Willie bathed in one of the pools of soapy water. Eventually he ran to the road and played with a bicycle tire while wearing his floppy hat. Isabel’s aunt asked me about the machines we use in my country to wash our clothes. Afterward we hung up the laundry to dry on spiny bushes. The clothes smelled deliciously of baking soda.

On my last day, Isabel and I tried to go on our afternoon adventure but Willie followed us. We stopped to rest under the shade of a lone tree and let him catch up. He had a blow pop in his mouth and lay his head down on Isabel’s lap. He kept almost falling asleep, which made red pools of saliva trickle from his mouth onto Isabel’s pants. Isabel didn’t notice at first because she was busy running her fingers through his short hair and pulling out little black bugs, just like the ones I’d seen on the underside of their puppy earlier that day. I felt pretty bad because it looked like Willie had fleas.

I finally saw the stars that night. (Usually the skies were overcast.) Isabel and I climbed on top of the family’s round, clay oven and looked at the heavens.  Even though my head was wedged underneath the corner of the family’s low roof and my back was arched at a weird angle–at this point the country finally felt like home.

When the truck came to pick me up the next day, Isabel partially hid behind her mom, pretending to be shy.

Isabel and I looked at the stars while sitting on top of the family's oven.