Birthdays, Deathdays, and the Stuff of Life

If you know me even just a little bit, you probably know that I love Getting Things Done. This certainly helps to explain how I found a volunteer position through a crapshoot email contact with a stranger that has enabled me to live in Bolivia for five months with the foolhardy aim of doing Master’s-level research work as an undergraduate student, after having become fluent in written academic Spanish and colloquial Andean Spanish in a crash-course period of three years. I make this all sound very exciting, but on the flip side, my obsession with accomplishing said “things” can lead me to a life that is as tediously abstract as the word “things” itself. I have been known to pass up vibrant parties to finish a writing project a day early (thus, theoretically, freeing me up to do even more Things than I would’ve done otherwise). I also spent at least two of the past three years refusing to watch any movie that wasn’t in Spanish, because I reasoned that I simply didn’t have time if my language skills weren’t also to benefit in the process. At home on breaks from school, I sometimes barely see dearly missed friends because I am too busy studying in between other “side projects,” like recording my second album.

But life is not made up of abstract Things to Get Done. As much as I might try to convince myself otherwise, the important things in life are vibrantly, viscerally concrete. For example, sharing peanut-butter-and-apple-slice sandwiches with my friends on an overcrowded bus from La Paz to Ancoraimes. Or watching the college classrooms across from my window light up in the evening and waiting for one of my research assistants to come to the window and jump up and down as he tries to get my attention. Or offering my eternally chilly hands to get warmed up between Hermana M.’s eternally warm, soft and motherly ones. Or arguing with a refresco vendor about whether or not I’ve paid her yet and realizing I’ve become one of those uppity Americans who doesn’t want to be cheated out of what translates to a few dimes for me. Or finding a sad love note dirtied under feet on the sidewalk. Or missing my mother on the US Mother’s Day. Or feeling complete as I run up to Mirador Montículo where the tall buildings fall away to reveal jaggedly carved stone mountain ranges that look so close I imagine I can stroke their contours. And finally, knowing that all of this could be taken away, indeed all of it will be taken away, in the blink of an eye, by that one task that every person on earth accomplishes completely, if not voluntarily: death.

If I was at risk of forgetting these important concretes of life, last week has provided a heartbreakingly sweet and, at times, just plain heartbreaking reminder. I was flying at the beginning of last week, veritably shining in my specialty of Getting Things Done. On Monday evening I wrote a brief paper on doing anthropological participant-observation, outlining several tools and approaches I saw as particularly useful for doing anthropology as a native of a cultural context. Over a lunch meeting on Tuesday, I presented these ideas to my five native-anthropologists-in-the-making, and tried to get them to generate their own ideas about things they will find noteworthy and challenges they will encounter in doing participant observation. I gave them each a copy of my paper on methodology and a thick notebook with hardcover binding carrying their name and the words “Cuaderno de Investigación (Research Notebook)” markered on to the cover of each. With these tools in hand, I sent them off to try their hand at participant observation in an event or situation in which they found themselves amongst other Methodists during the week.

Three of my research assistants already had the perfect opportunity to carry out this initial assignment and dive headlong into playing anthropologist, as we were planning to travel together to a weekend-long workshop on evangelization and church leadership for youth leaders from around the country. In an impressive group effort, my research assistants and I gathered at 10:30 the night before our departure to generate ideas for the design of a brief interview on gender and youth to administer to young men and women at the weekend training. We managed to generate more than enough questions and decide on a basic organizational approach without me dropping to sleep right there on the couch, and the next morning I woke up early and immediately got to work typing up, prioritizing and categorizing the questions into a user-friendly interview instrument. I dashed around getting some promised road food together for the trip and going to a printing and copying shop to get copies of the interview instrument made. In the midst of our whirlwind to get ready and leave, which included packing up a copious amount of wool blankets to make our beds on straw mats during the chilly nights of the rural altiplano, we heard there had been some sort of auto accident in which some people from the church were involved. We saw the daughter of the national secretary of finances crying with worry and being comforted by another hospedaje student, because the secretary of finances and his wife were, apparently, involved. Clear details were not forthcoming. Just before we headed out the gate of the hospedaje, an hermana arrived and was talking with the guard hermana of the hospedaje, and we heard the woman vaguely mention something about death, but then she waved us on encouragingly, and we set out for the pueblo of Ancoraimes. En route, we practiced giving each other the interview and recording it both with notes and with the digital recorder. Afterwards, as we settled back in our seats and Eddy excitedly pointed out landmarks as we neared and passed his own pueblo, I felt like we had just pulled off the most effective last-minute research designing and training on record. I expected to return home with the fruits of our labor, inspired and stimulated to dive deeper into our research.

God, however, had other plans than for us to Get Things Done last weekend. We arrived in Ancoraimes past dark, and a bitter wind was whipping through my thin hoodie as we stood in the deserted town plaza, unsure of the exact location of the district church’s headquarters. After a bit of wandering and worry, we stumbled upon a big garage-type gate with “Iglesia Evangélica Metodista” stenciled on to it, and I peeked in through the hole to see a large yard covered in grass like windblown hair, and in the distance, a big farmhouse glowing with warmth. We banged on the gate and called out for a few minutes before someone came to show us the way in. Rather than a whole crew of young church leaders, pastors and coordinators, however, a lone, middle-aged hermana dressed de pollera greeted us at the door. We stepped into a mostly barren living room with wide, clean old floorboards, an empty fireplace and a set of loveseats and a couch in the center. Seeing the blank confusion on our faces as we looked around the room, the hermana told us that everyone else had returned to La Paz already. When we informed her that’s where we had just come from, she asked us why we hadn’t heard about the accident. We had, of course, but we hadn’t heard what she was about to tell us: that two beloved members of the church had died in it. One, Pastor G., was the national coordinator of Liturgy and Communications, and pastor of four churches (on a rotating basis) in El Alto. Another, who I hadn’t met, was a young man from Oruro who led a Christian praise band and, as I found out that evening, had left behind a wife and a three-year-old son. Aside from that, the national secretary of finances’ wife and the younger sister of the deceased orureño were seriously injured, and the national secretary of finances himself, who was driving, sustained minor injuries. A sixth passenger, another young man from Oruro, came out with only a few scrapes and scratches.

My three research assistants and I were all a little paralyzed as we stood on those clean-scrubbed wooden floorboards with our backpacks and the suitcase full of blankets that now seemed somehow useless to me. I was automatically placed in the position of leader, decision-maker and spokesperson for the four of us. All I could offer in response to their queries about our decision to depart for Ancoraimes was, “We had heard about it when we left, but we hadn’t understood well the details. It was very confusing. We though the best thing to do was just to leave.” Rosmery offered, “No sabíamos que era tan grave” (“We didn’t know it was so bad”), which henceforth became something of a mantra for her as the night wore on.

A local pastor and another church hermano came in to greet us as well, and they and the hermana helpfully directed us, in our state of mild shock, to sit down on the couch and loveseats. We mulled briefly over whether we should just run back to the town square and try to catch the last movilidad (vehicle) back to La Paz, which they said usually left at 8:00. We determined that it was too dangerous to be traveling at night, however, and after consulting with me, the pastor and hermano decided we could stay in a guestroom with several bunk beds in the local hospital, rather than the traditional straw-mats-on-the-floor arrangement of big church encounters. We planned to wake up before dawn and take the 6:00 movilidad back home.

We sat mostly in silence as we waited for our cedar mate to be boiled and brought to us sweetened and accompanied with a piece of bread each. Eddy was the quietest of all. He pulled his baseball cap over his eyes as if he might be trying to hide tears. Amalia, seated at his side, grew uncomfortable with this gesture after awhile and jiggled his knee, saying, “Come on, don’t be sad, Eddy!” Rosmery, along with repeating her “No sabíamos que era tan grave” line, as if it were some kind of repentance for our heedlessness, asked questions about the accident, trying to get details that they mostly didn’t have. She also commented on the tragedy of the young orureño’s death, as she is from the department of Oruro and knows him, and his wife and child. I sat looking down at the worn, well-swept wood floor and thinking about how ridiculously fragile our human lives are, with tears welling up in my eyes every few minutes.

The pastor, for his part, kept trying to call his wife on her cell phone, because, as he explained, she was supposed to be home by now, and “when these sorts of things happen, you get to worrying.” But she arrived safe and sound, with their two-year-old daughter in tow. Shortly after arriving, the little girl walked over to her father, clasped his knees, and looked up into his face if she did know that it was “tan grave.” He picked her up and kissed her forehead and stroked her hair for quite awhile, because he, too, knew the graveness of this situation called life, which is so quickly and so easily followed by one called death.

This pastor was joined by another, somewhat older local pastor, and the two sat with us in the living room and tried to lighten the mood. They talked about other things, and attempted jokes. These efforts only started succeeding when they asked me about where I was from and what I was doing here. My foreignness, juxtaposed with my comfort with the language and sense of humor of Bolivian culture, is a constant source of amusement and fascination for my Bolivian brothers and sisters. By the time we finished our tea and bread and I announced that it was time for us to be getting to bed, we had more or less absorbed the fact of the accident, and we conversed light-heartedly with the pastors, who lead us through town to our appointed sleeping quarters, trying to learn how to pronounce and spell my name most of the way there. Meanwhile, Eddy bravely continued to drag the gigantic and half-broken roller suitcase full of blankets behind him across the bumpy streets, in the freezing cold, without gloves, despite various offers to relieve him of the duty he had designated for himself that day.

We awoke the next morning to more bitter cold and rode home with barely anything to eat or drink until we got back to La Paz, but we somehow managed to enjoy each other’s company anyway. We evenly distributed a meager leftover supply of drinking water, bananas and havas tostadas (fava beans I had fried in oil and salt the day before). We also held a surprisingly eventful tic-tac-toe match, and we enjoyed Eddy’s less than scientific—or psychic, for that matter—palm reading. As is commonly the case, experiencing a tragedy together seemed to have bound us to each other in a unique way.

I spent almost the entirety of the next two days processing Pastor G.’s death, too distracted or sad to even keep up with my field notes. I have been pondering how to describe Pastor G. here, because I don’t want to fall into the temptation of painting a grandiose picture of a man of monumentally loving, brave, and wise proportions, just because he’s gone and everybody misses him. I honestly didn’t know Pastor G. all that well, and he may have disappointed me had I known him better. As everyone does. Perhaps he thoughtlessly threw litter out the car window, or only gave money to beggars to boost his public image, or had a double sexual standard for his teenage daughters as opposed to his teenage son. I don’t know. But the man I did know was humble, soft-spoken, and always seemed genuinely concerned for the welfare of those around him. He would accompany the FEFEME hermanas at the last minute when they were delegated to attend church encounters, if they wanted him along for the extra support and perspective. He came across as timid and somewhat serious, but he was actually pretty keen on playful banter, and even forgave me—after he finished blushing—for once jokingly suggesting that he had multiple wives in different houses. Pastor G. was also one of the first people whose hands I shook in Bolivia. He was waiting at the airport with the FEFEME hermanas when I arrived, and on our winding drive down to the Methodist Hospedaje Center that morning, he offered me little insights on the church, La Paz, and Bolivia’s current government. The last time I saw Pastor G., I had stopped into his office to ask him about getting a copy of the book on the history of the Bolivian Methodist church that his colleague, Pastor D., wrote and to which Pastor G. contributed as a researcher. “That is the official story,” Pastor G. told me. “The documents, the records, the decisions that were made. But what it doesn’t say is how those decisions affected the people. It doesn’t have testimonies of peoples’ faith. That is what we need more of,” he affirmed. I thought, “This guy knows his stuff. I should come back and talk to him more about the church.” But now, of course, that’s a conversation I’ll never have.

Fragmented and mildly fond memories are all I am left with from my brief acquaintance with Pastor G. But in this sense, I am lucky. For many others, the memories are complete, continuous, and painfully dear to them. I snapped this photo of him as we were getting ready for the Easter march of the Methodist Churches of El Alto, and I had sent it to Hermana J., one of the FEFEME leaders, along with several others after the march. When I went to visit the FEFEME hermanas in their office earlier this week, Hermana J. was sitting glued to the computer screen as other business went on around her, meticulously examining this same photo. She zoomed in on Pastor G.’s face, his scarf, his notebook, his pant leg, as if by getting close enough to each part of his person, she could move through the pixels on the screen and move through time and space itself to touch him, to feel his real presence there. It was one of the most heartbreaking expressions of longing that I have ever witnessed.

Outside the FEFEME office, the receptionist of the building, who I have become somewhat close friends with, told me that things were sad around there, because they are all so used to having Pastor G. around. She explained how he would always come through smiling and asking how she was, and sometimes he would have so much on his mind that he would run into the door she was in charge of buzzing open, then he would have to turn back sheepishly and ask her to open it. Hermana G. was not only familiar with him at the office, but he was also the pastor of her church in El Alto. As her eyes welled up with tears remembering her daily interactions with Pastor G., I remembered seeing her at his burial service last Sunday. After they finally lowered the coffin into the grave, after many speeches, many songs, and much chewing of coca leaves and consumption of puffed corn and lemon sodas, we all began ripping flowers from the abundant wreaths and bouquets to fill his grave with them. I watched Hermana G. and several other women from his churches sobbing with belly-aching intensity as they threw fistfuls of red, pink and yellow petals into Pastor G.’s grave, and I couldn’t help but start weeping, too. The same was true when I had been standing outside the cemetery walls earlier, and saw Pastor G.’s wife and three daughters ushered outside as they wailed with sorrow and held black shawls around their heads. They were lead to a wall to lean against as they sobbed, and then they sat down outside the cemetery amongst other women and remained there for the rest of the ceremony, as if it were too much for them to be so near his ceremonial parting.

How on earth do we humans move on after losing someone as important to us as a husband, a father, a brother? I suppose most of us are able to and do perform such a feat, since most of us lose someone dear—or many dear ones—in the course of our lives. Still, I’ve yet to experience such a devastating loss, and it’s hard for me to wrap my mind around it. Perhaps this is why I came home from the burial on Sunday night with a splitting headache and stomachache to match my heartache. I went down to the kitchen to heat myself up my first decent meal of the day (which I suppose probably also had something to do with my physical state), and every time I dropped something or the match went out before I could light the burner, I swore profusely in English, and then told the two boys that were also cooking down there never to repeat what I was saying. I lamented aloud that no one was going to remember my birthday tomorrow; I was even having a hard time remembering it was my birthday tomorrow. I didn’t feel up to celebrating my 23^rd year of life with the sort of joy and zest that it probably deserved.

But somehow, joy found its way to me, to remind me that the reason I’m still alive is precisely to enjoy the fact that I, and countless of my beloveds, are still alive. I was awoken at 7:00 in the morning with a hearty, enthusiastic and out-of-tune serenade outside my door. I opened it to find perhaps half the students from the hospedaje, and the hospedaje caretaker, clapping and singing away in the hall, accompanied by the one boy who plays decent guitar. In the pants I’d put on backwards and my groggy morning breath, I danced a cueca with one of my male friends, replacing the customary white handkerchiefs with white napkins (napkins and toilet paper, in my experience, are in fact the de facto custom for this dance, since white handkerchiefs don’t seem to be on hand as often). Then we danced a huayño, adding into the dance the sassy and sweet single mother who lives in the hospedaje under the auspices of her American missionary godfather. I didn’t even care that they had woken me up early, because it felt good to be awake, and alive.

The hospedaje caretaker warned me at the end of the serenade that this was only the beginning of the fun, and even then I underestimated what exactly they had in store for me for later. I was, typically, nervous that if I didn’t do things to make my birthday special, nobody else would either. Furthermore, the FEFEME hermanas had called me to wish me a happy birthday but also to apologize that the promised cake they had planned to push my face into (a charmingly messy Bolivian custom) would have to be delayed since they were so busy with taking care of the practical follow-up from Pastor G.’s death. But my friends at the hospedaje, less directly impacted by the tragedies of the weekend, did not fail to deliver. After all the students had gotten back from their classes at 10:15 that night, I heard all kinds of commotion in the downstairs sala, and eventually wandered in to find balloons, ribbons, a table full of cake, candy, popcorn and other delights, and a poster they were still fervently finishing up that included the rather impressive artistic attempts and personal messages of almost all the students in the hospedaje.

An inordinate amount (for me) of sugar consumption ensued, and this was followed by an attempt to “teach” my Bolivian contemporaries to dance to soul music. Despite what I take to be the universal infectiousness of the Jackson 5 and the Temptations, and despite my continued attempts to convince them that there was really nothing to teach them—no specific steps or moves, that they just had to “feel it” and dance “a su manera” (in their own way)—they were understandably trepidatious about joining me in my wild arm-flailing and hip-gyrating. Later, we put on Bolivian folkloric music and they had their chance to embarrass me as they tried to teach me the morenada and the tinku. Finally, as if drawing up a sort of compromise, the DJs motioned me over to the stereo and said, “Why don’t we play cumbia? Everyone loves cumbia!” It’s true. Cumbia, even more so, I would argue, than salsa and merengue, is a sort of universal dance language, at least for anyone at all familiar with Latin American cultures.

My favorite part of the evening, however, was when I was dead tired (at the inappropriately early hour of 12:00, my friends all complained) and went into the kitchen to wipe some cake frosting off my sweater before, hopefully, escaping up to my room. There I found Eddy and M., who was the one playing the guitar this morning, and they were singing huayños. Eddy grabbed me and spun me around to the slow foot-stomping huayño rhythm, singing along to the perfectly appropriate words: “¿Qué la voy a hacer a esa mujer? La voy a matar, ¡la voy a matar!” (“What am I going to do with that woman? I’m going to kill her, I’m going to kill her!”) This somehow created enough energy in me to dance to a couple more of our private huayños intoning death on my birthday.

Afterwards, I went up to my room with my hands full of poster, a couple odd gifts and cards, and cake and other leftover snacks. I felt very happy to be alive, and very accomplished for having been in this world for 23 years now. Just Being Here, I thought, is more important than Getting Things Done. And despite my usually morbid sense of humor and my habit of casually reminding everyone that I could, possibly, die any day now (I even updated my will, which I originally wrote when I was 16, before leaving for Bolivia), I do have to agree with the wish constantly repeated to me throughout the day of my birthday here in Bolivia: that I complete many, many more years of life here on this earth.