It is ironic. Here I was thinking this week that nearly 100 days into my Bolivian journey, I had not experienced any physical pain or discomfort from airborne or waterborne illnesses. I’ve had the insomnia issues, but that is different from the shock of losing control of your basic bodily functions. I was giving thanks that I had been immune to the afflictions of foreign travelers, and I was beginning to conclude that I would avoid them for the duration of my stay in Bolivia. Well, look how wrong you can be! The body will humble you.
There must be a hundred and one ways to get diarrhea in Latin America. I have been backtracking over the last seven days, thinking of what I did, what I touched or handled, what I ate, and what I drank. Whatever the case, I am guessing it is something bacteriological. I had three tablets of an antibiotic prescribed for me by my primary care doctor in January for traveler’s diarrhea. I decided to take one in the evening, and since then my intestines have been calm. I continue to hydrate, and I will take a little bit of food shortly.
I felt so weak late Thursday and Friday, and all I could think about, when I was thinking of anything, was getting better, that I hardly prayed. How easy it is to forget God and the life of the spirit when I am sick. How easily all those good practices of prayer slip away when the body is infirm. Now I am returning to prayer. This morning I sat for a period of centering prayer with John 14. I will pray the rosary later today. I will return to the liturgy of the hours, though praying the divine office in Spanish lately has felt like homework, not like communion with God. What I would like is to forget about the words, whether English or Spanish, and find God in the silence, which is not merely me being quiet or absent from sound. Dear God, let me be with you today. I have been reading Henri Nouwen’s Latin American journal, ¡Gracias! It brings me back to my deepest desires. I ask God for help to unearth those deepest, truest desires from the dirt and the tomb of my selfish desires that bury and encase them.
These past two days, I have eaten little, and I have prayed little. Have I loved much? If to love is to keep the commandments of Christ, then I who have often forgotten and lost the commandments have loved little. If to love is to remain in the love of the Holy One who loved you first, then I have loved very little. This illness has been a physical purgative; maybe it corresponds to a mental and spiritual purgation that has been in progress during this Bolivian journey. When will I love God? When will I love God above and before and in all things? When will I love people, places, and things as God loves them in and for themselves, and not for my own purposes? How can I love the God living and true whose love brings every creature into being and keeps them in life? God, I am starting over, again. Purge me of every falsehood. Remove my illusions, the ones I see and then the ones I do not yet see. Bring me back to you. Bring me back to the point where I know the way. Let me try again to accept you and everything you give me on your terms. Then let me live in your love and live the way you want me to live. When will I love my neighbor without the self-imposed debilities of fear, insecurity, embarrassment, self-consciousness, self-absorption, and selfishness? When will I love without wanting something in return? Have I ever performed even one act of selfless love in my life? Did I ever carry my cross, my cross, for even one moment? Did I ever stop the crucifixion of another person? I do not want to know the answers! All I want now is another chance to live well and love well.
Briefly, to backtrack through the week before everything halted:
On Thursday, for our fortnightly cultural field trip with the Maryknoll community, we had a three-hour tour of Cochabamba from the north to the south and back to the center. All the students and all the teachers boarded a chartered bus (minus seatbelts, alas) and we ambled past historic casonas of colonial vintage, contemporary museums and institutions of cultural higher learning; through the Recoleta district and one of the oldest churches in Cochabamba; El Pueblito, one of the oldest communities and public spaces of Cochabamba; onward from the northeast to the southeast past Cristo de la Concordia to Laguna Alalay, whose dimensions were engineered by humans and whose toil made it so, and whose waters are slowly being decontaminated with the help of the Japanese government; to the southern zone where nearly half of the population lives in dense quarters, in the valley and increasingly up in the hills, without reliable sources of water or electricity; through a tunnel to the eastern city limits and the next town of Sacaba; and back into the city center past the campus of the public university, San Simón (tuition: $2 per semester). Our teachers were able guides who offered descriptions of the cultural and historic points of interest at every phase of our tour. So was Señora Kitty, who came along for the ride. They carried off the tour in a timely fashion, too, bringing us back to Maryknoll by quarter to twelve.
From Maryknoll, Brother Scott and I made it with plenty of time to spare to our lunch date with Padre Tomás Kornacki and the four other friars who currently live at El Hospicio, a fraternity located in Plaza Colón. From El Hospicio, the Franciscans provide meals and social services to the neediest neighbors of Cochabamba. We enjoyed the beauty of the friars’ humble cloister garden and appreciated the generosity of their table. I would have enjoyed our visit more had the fever, chills, and weakness not begun to grip me.
On Wednesday, my long day, a cultural conference at Maryknoll on motherhood in Bolivia, then an afternoon at Nuestra Casa with the girls. Thanks to Daniela Mercado Antezana, a friend of the mission center, for her presentation. Did you know mama is as close to a universal word as we have? It’s present in virtually all languages and is thought to have its origin in the primordial cry of our ancestors for the loving protection of their female parent. We learned that May 27 is the Bolivian Mother’s Day in tribute to the women of Cochabamba who on that date in 1812 gave their lives in defense of their homes and communities from the advances of the armies of the Spanish crown during the struggle for independence. We learned much about the contemporary social and economic context of motherhood in Bolivia. We learned how the Bolivian economy has survived and grown through the entry of women into the labor market, but women still receive much less than their fair share of wages and benefits than men do. Through perseverance, women have begun to overcome the many barriers to participation in the economy while retaining their role as leader of the nuclear family. We learned about the prevalence of teenage pregnancy—Bolivia claims the highest rate in Latin America. We concluded by forming small groups in which we shared the names of our mothers and what we were thankful for from them. I said I was thankful for my mother Mary’s unconditional love.
Then, on to Nuestra Casa. A few more girls have arrived, and one has returned to her family. They worked very well that afternoon on their drawing assignment; I asked them to draw an object of personal importance to them. They remained focused in quiet concentration for longer than the hour we allotted to them, so we let them keep going until they were done. In the remaining two hours I cleaned up the dining room and wiped down the dirty green tables; watched some of the girls play blindman’s buff; and joined Señora Nieves in preparing a peck of tomatoes for salsa to go with the tacos the girls would eat that evening. I’d like to return to the shelter tomorrow for my Sunday morning visit, but I do not want to risk sickening the girls with whatever I am clearing out of my system. I have written an e-mail asking to be excused.
Lastly, I think classes went well this week. Joshua and Brother Scott are getting along famously. I am getting accustomed to the new dynamic with my compañera Grace. She is more reserved than Joshua—well, everyone is more reserved than Joshua. She knows her stuff, having studied Spanish through high school and done an immersion last summer in Lima, Peru. We are at the same level of skill, and I am sure she will leapfrog over me soon. For now, I find myself stepping up and speaking more. It’s a good challenge for me. And we have begun to use the intermediate-advanced level textbook. Time to climb!
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