Well, today is Mother´s Day in Bolivia and I wondered why it fell on this day, May 27, and not on a Sunday at least like ours. It was explained to me that the day was chosen to coincide with the Heroínas de la Coronilla festival which commemorates the women and children who defended this fair city during the Revolutionary war of 1812 (it´s necessary to specify by year which revolution one is talking about round these parts for obvious reasons). The nasty little Spaniard Jose Manuel Goyeneche got a nasty surprise when he and his conquistadores attempted to sneak into Cochabamba and take it while all the men were away fighting in Oruro. The photo is the one I took this morning, with women, men, children and ice cream sellers, high on the hill of San Sebastian, behind the bus station and pretty rough around the edges, (making it the most dangerous place in Cochabamba day or night). If you zoom in on the middle you´ll see the women all guts and glory ready for combat. Other sculptures around the monument show a heated congregation of women around a table discussing strategy, and the women en masse going hammer and tongs (for that may be all that had as far as I could tell) toward the surprised mounted Spanish forces. As usual there´s a strong religious sentiment in the Christ image atop *sigh*. Oh well.
I had an English class scheduled for last night that was cancelled due to Mother´s Day. It´s a pretty hefty affair here, where mums get all the attention their little bambinos can lavish on them. As I made my way into the city on the bus and toward San Sebastian I saw dozens of extravagantly decorated cakes being balanced with great skill by lads and ladies as they also pushed their bicycles, kept their kids off the street, dodged traffic and all the while resisting the temptation of what clearly must have been going through their minds (well, it was going through mine) - slapping the cake into the face of an unsuspecting other ala so many Bert Newton and Graham Kennedy sketches.
And why do mums get so much attention today? I had a little think when I realised that my lunch wasn´t ready today and I had to enjoy myself elsewhere. My host mum works her bum off the rest of the year, as does every other woman here in South America, and much more than many mums need care to think about in the west. Is this day merely a bigger sorry than what we (western men and children) need to muster up for our overworked mothers due to the enormousness of the task of being a mother here? Who knows. Another thing I won´t be here long enough to be certain about.
On the way back down the hill I was called out to by an old fellow walking with his Cholita wife and accosted by a barrage of Quechuan which I understood none of, let alone his Spanish, which he tried on after his jokes about the size of my shoes and wanting to try them on. He was jovial and his wife chuckled as we chatted about whether I had kids (for they had eight!), whether Fiona was a Cholita woman and wore a skirt bulked out with undergarments and why on earth was she so far away... We had a good time strolling down the hill, and I wished Mrs. a Feliz Dia de Madre, and fondly said goodbye.
This got me thinking about the recent spate of suggestions and warnings given me by people who "know more because I´ve been here longer", that all Bolivians appear nice at the start but look out because they´ll be after something sooner or later as if the niceness is only a precursor for gringo exploitation. I thought what the couple I spoke to must have wanted from me. Nothing. On my way to and from the city I was standing scrunched up and bent very much over, or squatting on the floor on Micro Buses in order to not look so silly (no seats available), and both times, when someone vacated a seat I was poked and pointed to the new spot for more comfort by benevolent women and men. They couldn´t have given a toss about what they could extract from me, except a smile and a gracias. People who "know more than me" usually don´t. Granted, one of these cynics had been shuffled into a fake police car and held up at gunpoint along the Prado where I often walk via. I don´t deny bad things happen here and I´m not letting my bag leave my sight or out of my grasp but I´m going to let people help me if they can. I´ll recap on this in a few months and see how I feel then.
Feliz Dia de Madre!
Your FNBC.
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