March 16, 2913

Off on another South American adventure at the end if the month
We'd love to have you along vicariously.

December 10, 2012, "The Chair"

Every time I drove through Great Village,  the old chair, sitting road-side in front of the antique shop,  called to me.  Even at a distance, I could see the chair’s surface peeling off.  The chair’s bones still looked good; solid square legs, hefty arms and a back that was big and broad.  The eight cut out triangles on the back added just a hint of good humour.  In the winter, the chair was laden with snow. In the summer, the chair was blistered and cracking.  The flimsy bottom slats were topsy-turvey.    Finally, I stopped the car  to have a closer look.

As I approached, I heard the warm tenor voice of the chair say; “I used to live in the doctor’s house.  Many, many fine men and women sat in me.”  The pine table next to the chair softly added;  “I lived in a warm humble farm house. Six children, an old grandmother, the farmer and his wife said grace over me before all their meals.  I was the centre of that happy household.”  Suddenly the battered trunk under the table piped up; “And I started out in England.  I carried all of the things that the grandmother and the farmer brought with them to Canada.  The farmer was just a little boy then and his father was there too.  An entire house-hold in a box and I was that box.  When we first arrived in Great Village, I was the only furniture we had.  People sat on me, played games on top of me and when the boy’s baby brother died, it was me that supported the little pine coffin while the entire community cried.”

I went into the antique shop and stuck a deal with  Clair, the owner.  The next afternoon, he delivered the chair, the table and the trunk.   We lugged them to the basement.  I started chipping off the dirt and loose bits.  I sanded, glued, clamped and polyfilled.   Throughout this assault, they were strangely quiet.  I wanted them to be perfect again.   After several weeks, I realized that nothing could make them new again.  Just as I am my past, so they were theirs.

I brought them upstairs to the kitchen and welcomed them to their new home.  I made a plump pillow for the chair bottom, I painted the table a cherry red and I polished the metal bits on the trunk.  Together,  we are all happy and beautiful. 

December 9 2012

Woke up this morning to glorious early morning light, billowing clouds, and a very high tide. I grabbed my camera and Marsh and I set off for the cabin. The river was mirror-like and ready to spill onto the marsh grass. In the far distance, I could see the splash of spray as waves crashed onto the beach. How could it be so calm on the river and so riled on the bay? We started off toward the bay but suddenly my camera card was full. Inadvertently I had a very small 128 card in the camera and I was shooting raw files and so the ten or so photos had filled the card. No matter, I thought, I'll go home and get a bigger camera card. As we approached the house I could hear a huge racket of crows. I've never heard anything like this. It put some speed in my step. In front of me a cloud of raucous crows rose from a maple tree. Left on the bottom branches was a large dark shape, an eagle I thought. But no, it's tufted head showed it to be a great horned owl. Darn no pictures left on the camera card. I struggled to erase one to make room for a photo, grabbed a quick shot and the owl rose into air and flew down into a large spruce tree, with all the crows above it, taunting and bullying.file://localhost/Users/joylaking/Desktop/marsh2emfile://localhost/Users/joylaking/Desktop/marsh1em

March 30, 2012

Another busy week and this is my last posting from Bolivia as we fly to Peru tomorrow.

On Tuesday, after a meeting at the Ivar Mendez International Foundation, Jim and I were off to CATI orphanage with Ernesto, where I taught art. We had a terrific morning doing pastels and watercolours and ending with toothpicks and plasticine. Then we had a great lunch at a vegetarian restaurant. After sietsta, we went to visit the well know Bolivian artist, Javier Fernandez and his wife Marta. We spent a wonderful couple of hours. I loved his work and feel inspired to try more dry brush watercolour. Havier and I tentatively made plans to explore possibilities to do a joint exhibition in Canada and Bolivia.

On Wednesday, after a beauty treatment at Yumey´s sister´s shop ¨Miriams¨, I took Miriam, Yumey and Ernesto out for lunch. The beauty treatment was a huge contrast to Aucapata for me. Earlier in the morning, in preparation for this treat, I had plucked a few hairs from my eyebrows and after breakfast when Jim wasn´t there, I cleaned my very dirty thumb nails with the end of my straw. You can just imagine me later in the morning, when I was plunked down in a very upscale beauty salon having every hair on my face pulled out by a whirling string while at the sametime, some else was fussing over my hands. Quite an experience! I think I´m more comfortable in the muddy, pig-shit filled streets of Aucapata than the cosmopolitan world.

In the afternoon, the made over me again taught art to a different group of kids at CATI orphanage.

Thursday morning, I had a meeting with Mario Condez Cruis, in preparation for the class I was teaching in the afternoon at the Bolivian Art Academy. I love Mario´s art and I very much enjoying renewing my acquaintance with him. (We had supper together three years ago). After the meeting, Jim and I bought a dozen full sheets of watercolour paper and a large bag of fruits and vegetables for my teaching at the Academy. Jim and I then took Yumey, Lucy, and Yvonne for lunch at my favouite vegetarian restaurant. The class in the afternoon was just great. Yuonne came to translate and after showing the Aucapata paintings, I demonstrated a full sheet watercolour in thirtyfive minutes. Afterward, the students were each given a 22¨x 30¨sheet of paper and given one hour to do their full sheet painting. There was lots of resistance. I gave out both my paint sets and all four of my brushes and still we had to make do. Fortunately most of the students rose to the challenge and they all learned allot. Two refused to try. One girl was uncomfortable wrecking a full sheet of paper. I tore it and said ¨Now I´ve wrecked the paper, Go ahead and try the exercise.¨ The other girl flatly refused and continued to do her painstaking copy of a reclining nude. Unless she changes, her hopes of being an artist are sadly nil. After the exercise, I demonstrated another twenty minutes of finish details and invited everyone to come and stay with us in Canada if they are ever in our country. It was a most enjoyable time, nudging young creative minds but I was totally exhausted afterwards because of my coninuing asthma.

On Friday, I took Yvonne and Lucy painting on location. We worked outside for four and a half hours. Then we caught a cab to the office and I did an interview for an international radio program on culture. Luckily Yumey translated and I didn´t have to do much of it in Spanish.

One of yesterday´s highlights for me, was seeing the two pairs of shoes that Jim purchased on the ¨sky´s behalf¨for Anahi. This tiny girl was one of our favourites; full of vitality, spunk and creativity. At our civico, she danced with two friends. She was obviously the leader. She was wearing a lovely traditional white blouse, a full gold skirt and her two broken sandals. We had noticed her wearing these at all of our classes at the casa and at school. Before we left, Jim traced her foot. Today he got her a pair of solid sandals and a pair of pink dancing shoes that will fall out of the sky for her when Danillo (another IMIF dentist) returns to Aucapata on April 8th.

After the radio interview, we had an excellent two hour meeting with the IMIF staff on our ideas and our experience in Aucapata. We had lots of great experiences and our biggest challenge of the bugs and the constant itching can be dealt with for the folks who follow us. Afterward the meeting, the IMIF staff took us out for supper and surprised us with two amazing gifts. A Bolivian silver tray and a Bolivian silver wine set. Both of which Jim and I will cherish. Most of all, we cherish the people we have met and worked with and the enriching experiences that we not only survived but gave our best too.

A present from a student in Aucapata, will also have a place of honour in our home. Jose gave me a wonderful sling shot that he had carved. The carving is beautifully done of a naked woman with her arms raised to hold the sling. Probably there are all kinds of ideas that can be read into this image!

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.

Aucapata Word Picture 4

The morning is shrouded in gray.
Only the village exists.
The mountain have disappeared.
The flat light on the brown adobe buildings
Is cold and depressing.
Suddenly there is a glow in the sky as
The sun tries to break through.
Just for a moment, the green weeds
In the street look alive.
Then the gray rushes back in.
Even the main square is gone.
Out of the mist a herd of sheep pass by.
Their old shepherd, dressed all in gray,
Is surprised to see a colourful me,
Sitting on the door step in the fog.
We both smile and wave.

Aucapata Word Picture 3

I´m wondering how people live their lives in this remote mountain village. The women work hard cooking on small woodfires, scrubbing clothes in streams, tending animals and crops. Everything is labour intensive. Sometimes, the children walk hours to school but race and play on their way up or down the mountian. Even when it is dark, kids are playing. Often a tiny girl, maybe aged six, has a baby sister or brother tied to her back. She heaves the bundle around, changes the baby in the street, and is a mother. Often that baby is a big baby and can already walk. Even when it is dark, kids are playing outside. They use two litre pop bottles as tobaggans or skate boards and take turns hauling each other down the hill. Faster and faster until the puller tires or the pulled crashes. They build mud dams in the street to make puddles big enough to lie beside. Their skipping ropes are hand made or woven grass.

At four pm, or five pm or 8 pm there is honking on the mountain top. The bus is arriving. Everyone drifts towards the square. The bus doesn´t leave again until 2 am or 4 am but some of the passengers are ready and waiting. The bus roof is piled high with bags and boxes and sometimes passenengers. The cold metal interior of the bus is filled with wool wrapped people waiting to be jossled and tossed on the rough winding mountain road.

The first truck reached this village in 1974. Now all the able bodied men and boys return home in 4x4s from the mines on Saturday. One night a week to drink and procreate before retuning underground.