Salta
I came to Salta in Argentina Wednesday night. I boarded the bus to Bermejo in Tarija at 10 am. When I was at the bus station which is located at that road on which the accident happend the day before, I was watching people cross the street and some were cautious and some where not. A thought came to me that it is the only street of this type in Tarija, a street which is a little like a highway: it's possible to travel with a speed of 60 km per hour. Normaly cars travel at 30 km per hour because of the road conditions. So maybe the granny saw the car when she was approaching the road but did not look again because she didn't realize the speed with which it was going. Maybe it is better for the Bolivians that the roads are unpaved... and that usual speed is 30 k/h... When I was on the bus I also was thinking how when something bad happens to me or I see something bad happening to other people, my senses suddenly become very acute. As if normaly the body and mind doesn't realize the everyday-life dangeres because the senses are kind of dull. When something bad happens, suddenly the world is a dangerous place: you look left and right, back and ahead, again left and right, you look 360 degrees before crossing the street, you avoid the edge of the sidewalk, someone taps you on the shoulder wanting to ask something and you jump up startled, a waiter puts a spoon on the saucer and it sounds in your ear like an explosion of a bomb, or a mosquito passes by and it sounds like F-16 crossing the sky. It's very tiring, this state of acuteness, to the body and mind. I think that maybe people who are in the prolonged state of alert, like soldiers and criminal pathologists, get addicted to things which bring the senses back to their usual dullness...
The border with Argentina was a tiny station with a tiny immigration office where I got my exit stamp and a few stores with things to drink and crackers. I got local Bolivian and Argentinian beer for myself, crackers for the stray dogs who live at the station, and I gave the rest of Bolivianos to the shop keepers - outside of Bolivia nobody wants them. The border is a river. I stood on it, in a place where the painted Bolivian flag ends and Argentinian flag begins and I felt very emotional. I looked at the few soldiers and shop keepers and I felt sad leaving all these wonderful Bolivian people behind. I have to say again that they are amazing people. They are very warm. They are walking slowly, talking slowly, they are totally peaceful. Wherever they asked me if I liked their country and I said it was beautiful they immediately said: "It's so peaceful here, no?" I talked to so many Bolivians. They are the most natural, the most sincere, patient and hospitable people I met. I wonder if it's because their life is so hard. They may not realize it but I, who can compare it to life in other places, can say it is hard. They never complain. But they are very spiritual people. When I told them about my meeting with the Shaman and showed them my amuletes, they showed me theirs and told me about their past lives. They too, believe in karma and reincarnation. They don't call it karma but maybe destiny - they believe they are where they should be. I think that is why it was so easy for them to be exploited by gringos (and gringos here mean all non-indigenous, all "foreigners") because they don't rebel. Talking to the indigenous people gives me the idea of their culture and their values and why history happened the way it happened. Maybe the Quechua Indians from the region of Ayacucho in Peru are a rare case of Indians who don't agree with the present state of affairs - the Shining Path started in Ayacucho so there the indigenous people are more aware of the injustice and inequility. There are random protest here and there, like the one I saw in Cuzco, but they are not organized it seems... I am reading now about all the groups of indigenous people in South America. I will report what I have read soon. Now it was a digression... So I crossed the boarder and came to the Argentinian immigration station which looked like a regular North American or European boarder: lots of police, a few buildings (one for checking documents, one for luggage searching) , a separate station for checking individual passangers and for buses, etc. The bags were thoroughly, very thoroughly, checked for coca and agricultural products which are not permitted to enter Argentina. I took a collectivo taxi to the nearest village and then from there another collectivo taxi to Salta. It was a very pleasant three-hour ride with a very nice group of people: a very pregnant woman and two older man. All three of them felt very sorry for me that I was travelling alone and didn't have any kids and where listing suitable bachelors in Salta, hoping to marry me off there. They and the taxi driver where joking all the way and I had so much fun listening to them. When they learned that my ex-husband is specializing in psychiatry it started the avalanche of jokes about psychiatrists. I was ready to pee in my pants with laughter...
Salta looks like a European city. It's beautiful, wealthy, people are dressed with acute elegance. Not many kilometers from Bolivia but a totaly different world. And immediately problems connected to "civilized world": banks won't accept a 20-dollar bill because it has a 2mm rip on a side, there's commission when exchanging money, the waiter ignores me because I am not acutely elegant, the people at Citibank are as abnoxious as they are in all other Citibanks I have visited... Otherwise people are very nice. It's just the regular contacts with the corporate part of the country that made me feel like hoping back on the bus to Bolivia. Of the things I saw here the most interesting is the Museum of Anthropology. It contains the artefacts found in a gravesite on the peak of volcano Llullaillaco at 6,700 above sea level. Three perfectly preserved mummies of three children were found. It's amazing how well preserved they were. Here's a website of the museum if you would like to read about it: www.maam.org.ar. I am going to go to the website myself now to see what they have there.
The border with Argentina was a tiny station with a tiny immigration office where I got my exit stamp and a few stores with things to drink and crackers. I got local Bolivian and Argentinian beer for myself, crackers for the stray dogs who live at the station, and I gave the rest of Bolivianos to the shop keepers - outside of Bolivia nobody wants them. The border is a river. I stood on it, in a place where the painted Bolivian flag ends and Argentinian flag begins and I felt very emotional. I looked at the few soldiers and shop keepers and I felt sad leaving all these wonderful Bolivian people behind. I have to say again that they are amazing people. They are very warm. They are walking slowly, talking slowly, they are totally peaceful. Wherever they asked me if I liked their country and I said it was beautiful they immediately said: "It's so peaceful here, no?" I talked to so many Bolivians. They are the most natural, the most sincere, patient and hospitable people I met. I wonder if it's because their life is so hard. They may not realize it but I, who can compare it to life in other places, can say it is hard. They never complain. But they are very spiritual people. When I told them about my meeting with the Shaman and showed them my amuletes, they showed me theirs and told me about their past lives. They too, believe in karma and reincarnation. They don't call it karma but maybe destiny - they believe they are where they should be. I think that is why it was so easy for them to be exploited by gringos (and gringos here mean all non-indigenous, all "foreigners") because they don't rebel. Talking to the indigenous people gives me the idea of their culture and their values and why history happened the way it happened. Maybe the Quechua Indians from the region of Ayacucho in Peru are a rare case of Indians who don't agree with the present state of affairs - the Shining Path started in Ayacucho so there the indigenous people are more aware of the injustice and inequility. There are random protest here and there, like the one I saw in Cuzco, but they are not organized it seems... I am reading now about all the groups of indigenous people in South America. I will report what I have read soon. Now it was a digression... So I crossed the boarder and came to the Argentinian immigration station which looked like a regular North American or European boarder: lots of police, a few buildings (one for checking documents, one for luggage searching) , a separate station for checking individual passangers and for buses, etc. The bags were thoroughly, very thoroughly, checked for coca and agricultural products which are not permitted to enter Argentina. I took a collectivo taxi to the nearest village and then from there another collectivo taxi to Salta. It was a very pleasant three-hour ride with a very nice group of people: a very pregnant woman and two older man. All three of them felt very sorry for me that I was travelling alone and didn't have any kids and where listing suitable bachelors in Salta, hoping to marry me off there. They and the taxi driver where joking all the way and I had so much fun listening to them. When they learned that my ex-husband is specializing in psychiatry it started the avalanche of jokes about psychiatrists. I was ready to pee in my pants with laughter...
Salta looks like a European city. It's beautiful, wealthy, people are dressed with acute elegance. Not many kilometers from Bolivia but a totaly different world. And immediately problems connected to "civilized world": banks won't accept a 20-dollar bill because it has a 2mm rip on a side, there's commission when exchanging money, the waiter ignores me because I am not acutely elegant, the people at Citibank are as abnoxious as they are in all other Citibanks I have visited... Otherwise people are very nice. It's just the regular contacts with the corporate part of the country that made me feel like hoping back on the bus to Bolivia. Of the things I saw here the most interesting is the Museum of Anthropology. It contains the artefacts found in a gravesite on the peak of volcano Llullaillaco at 6,700 above sea level. Three perfectly preserved mummies of three children were found. It's amazing how well preserved they were. Here's a website of the museum if you would like to read about it: www.maam.org.ar. I am going to go to the website myself now to see what they have there.
posted by Asia Kabat at 9:57 AM
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