February 11,2009

At seven this morning we arrived by overnight bus to La Paz; it was a hellish trip best quickly forgotten. This morning as we drove along the alto plano to the valley of La Paz, it was just getting light, the moon was full, local buses were piled with colourful packs on the roofs and colour indigenous folk were gathered on the road sides. It felt like coming home. La Paz is the only place that we will visit on this trip that we visited last year. We´re even staying in the same divey Hotel El Torino that we stayed in a year ago. One of its best features for me is that it doesn´t have a television. Our room has the same Snoopy sheets and the book exchange most of the same books! The location is wonderful, the price is right and there´s a great little cafe next door for breakfast!

We are coming to La Paz to do some work on our Bolivian Art Project. Last night on the bus¨, I was thinking about what art education could do or why it might be important to encourage it here. I think that art education fosters decision making skills and creative thought and that both are essencial for leaders. Creative thought is useful for anyone in any country but it is especially useful in a poor developing country such as Bolivia that is just finding its feet economically and politically. In addition, on a personal level, making art is a form of self expression and enhances self worth.

The past several days we explored Sucra, the original capital of Bolivia. Sucra is a fantastic colonial city, most of the core was built in the 1500s. I´d love to return here for a month or more. Indigenous folk were demonstrating, milling about, hunkered down cooking on little charcoal cookers or working and relaxing on the streets of Sucra. Almost all wore their tradional dress.It seemed like life was being lived out on the street. I saw my first young infant out of it´s colourful carrying poncho. The baby had only it´s face showing and was a tighly wrapped package bound with a long white woven strip. I saw women releaving themselves in the street; with their full skirts it was very discrete. They just squatted over a road drain and their full skirt hides everything. Across the street from the hospital were seven funerias, all with their caskets on view to the street.

Jim and visited several museos. Two were fantastic. The Museo of Indigenous Craft was a private museum started by an anthropology foundation. There were gallery after gallery of amazing weavings and pottery. Some pieces were several thousand years old. Each area around Sucra still has its distinctive woven patterns, colours and clothing. Lucky for us, there was a paper translation in English of all the labels. A highlight was two young women sitting on the ground each weaving an intricate amazing piece from their culture on frame looms. I could have sat there for the three months until they finished.

Yesterday, Jim and I visited the Museo of the Constitution. This building from 1500 was initially built by the Jesuits as a church and later became a university, then the seat of government where coalitions, constitutions and agreements were brokered and now it is a museum. We were very fortunate to get an English guide (I suspect that he was much more than a guide as he was frequently interrupted to sign letters and forms). This fellow gave us an amazing one hour history lesson as we toured the actual rooms where many of the historic agreements were signed.