Not the material of exciting blogs, I grant you. No, I did not resolve Bolivia’s incipient constitutional crisis today. No, I did not help Venezuela’s warring rival governments reach an accord. No, I did not get the U.S. Congress to enact a humane immigration policy and close our immoral, illegal detention centers wherever they are. Today, I am but a student, a sleepy friar doing his best to acquire another language when he lacks the charism and youthfulness to do it.
The field trips the Maryknoll language program arranges are a means to that end. Today’s excursion was to Universidad Mayor de San Simón, the Cochabamba campus of the public university of Bolivia. Our mission was simply to intercept college students and have conversations with them. That’s all. All it required of Brother Scott, Joshua, and me was to violate the instinct, reinforced through years of conditioning by family and society, to avoid talking to strangers! Well, it required a little more than that: we had also to coax these unsuspecting students to overcome their own inhibition forbidding talking to strangers … especially Americans wearing funny brown robes.
Also working against us was the time of the season. The campus was mostly empty. Classes do not begin for a couple of weeks. Students are on winter recess. New students, or postulantes, were more common on the campus, as they were preparing for entrance exams and meeting other prerequisites for matriculation.
In spite of these militating factors, Profesor Óscar and I succeeded in interrupting a few students who were communing with their smartphones. Maria Luz told me about her studies in social work. It’s a six-year program, and she has finished four semesters so far. Omar has finished his studies in music, including voice, guitar, and piano; I think he told me he is concluding a thesis now. Lastly, I met a young man and woman, whose names escape me now, who are postulantes intending to study physical education, specifically team sports. (I suppose they mean how to teach physical fitness through team sports, but that is conjecture.) I had plenty of questions for these young people, but they were reluctant to ask me questions. Bolivians are a reserved people. Profesór Óscar gently prodded them to ask me about my life! I concluded each conversation with the utmost courtesy, using the politest expressions I knew. This is indeed a nation of introverts, or so it seems to me. I have had the same experience of reserve every day for the 150 days I have lived at Convento San Francisco. It takes a gregarious extravert to break through the social and cultural barriers to establish a connection with the everyday people of Bolivia. To which I say, it ain’t me, babe.
On the walk from the university campus back to the vicinity of Convento San Francisco, mere blocks away, Profesor Óscar and I discussed the differences between college life in the United States and Bolivia. I noted that all the students at this university were locals; all of them grew up in Cochabamba. But in the United States it is a rite of passage to leave home and hometown to study at a college or university. Absent from the Cochabamba campus were student dormitories—there is no department of residential life. Students commute from home, wherever home is. (Fun fact: Omar was living at San Luis, the diocesan seminary of Cochabamba.) On the other hand, student residences and student dining are big business for American colleges and universities, rivaled, of course, by student athletics. The institutions practically depend on the students living on campus for their bread and butter. Becoming landlord is what keeps many a college financially solvent. We discussed some other differences, such as how a student applies to schools, but the main factor we focused on was the economics of student life.
Okay, I am late for my early dinner! Making a beeline for the refectory table before paying respects, at Eucharist, before the welcome-table of Jesus.
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