March 26, 2012

Well the Aucapata adventure in finished and early this morning we arrived back in La Paz. The third week in Aucapata was really terrific. By then I knew all the kids by name and they knew that if I wasn´t teaching art at a school or our casa, then I was sitting somewhere outside painting. All they had to do was to find me. I had the nicest times with these kids. Although they usually wanted me to play or paint them, after they realized that I was working, they would sit and watch for hours. If they were still watching when I finished, I always painted them. At our art exhibition on Saturday at the house, I displayed the fifteen paintings and three sketches of Aucapata that I did and I also displayed all the sculpture, painting, prints, and pastels that were done by the kids and adults in the free open after school sessions and on Saturdays. It was a terrific little exhibition and well atended by a throng of fourty kids who made art, ate pop corn and had me draw them non stop for the full three hours. We also had a four teachers and a smattering of parents and neighbours attend. Five of the adults went home with sketches of themselves as well.

Jumey, the director of IMIF came to Aucapata on Tuesday for the exhibitions at the schools and the Saturday exhibition. Having Ernesto and Jumey living in the house as well as Amparo, Lucy and us was a bit crowded. Even though we got three extra chairs, two of the original chairs had broken and collapsed (only one with me on it) and so for supper and our nightly wizard game Jim would sit on my painting stool. (He still won at wizard even with just his head showing above the table top).

Jumey excellently represented the foundation at the official part (the civicos) of the four exhibitions. She also improved living conditions at the casa. When Ernesto arrived on the food truck, she had him also bring a kitchen cupboard. Now that she´s seen the way the tiny frying pan tips over because the handle is heavier than the pot, I know that a new frying pan will also be on its way.

It was also extremely important that Jumey see first hand some of what we accomplished as well as some of the challenges. Jim and I will both have lots of suggestions for the foundation in our final report and eventually it will be Jumey´s role to implement some of them.

Our original plan was to depart Aucapata at two this morning by bus. Yesterday morning we were pleased to find a truck and driver for hire that should have made the return trip to LaPaz for the six of us cheaper, faster and far more comfortable. Off we set at 2:30 yesterday afternoon. The first five hours were glorious because it was daylight for our trip on the narrow rough winding trail. After it got dark, we arrived at the paved road, and this is when Spanish conversations started replacing the radio dance music. Jim and I didn´t know what was wrong except that that there was allot of slow eratic driving. At midnight, in a very unsafe area of ElAlto, our driver stopped and pretended to run out of gas so that he wouldn´t have to drive into La Paz. Luckily the cell phones had been humming and Amparo´s parents arrived and picked her up and shortly afterwards the five of us piled into Paz´s little car ( Paz is our friend and taxi driver) to be driven into the city. An hour later Jim and I were safely in our LaPaz hostel.