Seven Years

It was seven years ago this weekend that my family and I closed the door for the last time on the dinky green rental house where we lived in San Francisco’s Noe Valley and headed back here to Bolivia. Seven years.

I don’t think that too many people really plan on becoming an “ex-pat”. I think you move away for what you expect to be “just a bit” and you wake up one day a few years later to realize you have a whole life that isn’t in the US anymore.

We were supposed to be here for a year, maybe two. Long enough for our kids to go to middle school here. Long enough for me to write a book, The Democracy Owners’ Manual. We stuck a bunch of things we couldn’t part with in an 11’ by 7’ storage crate to await our return.

Well, our two oldest wrapped up middle school quite a while ago now. The book is long since written and published. The storage crate is probably starting to get a little lonely. We are still here in the Andean foothills and it looks like we’re going to be here a long while more. I mean, we have dogs here. Who sets down shallow roots and then gets dogs?

Bolivia. What is it that makes so many people fall in love with this country? How does it seduce us?

Is it the people? Is it the short trips to the corner store that turn into a long visit talking about everything from politics to the relative merits of the soft round bread versus the harder variety shaped like footballs? Is it the humility, a culture in which the emphasis is about something other than what material we can acquire and how? Is it that being a half hour late for everything is actually okay?

Is it the sky? Is it the mountains that rise above this city where we live, alternately snowcapped or green in summer, dry and brown in winter? Is it the green jungles, the barren altiplano, and the fact that all of these geographies reside a day’s drive from one another?

Is it the culture, the music, the dances, the indigenous imprint that runs through the place? A Bolivian friend of mine, Carlos, once told me. “We really don’t have museums here. We don’t need them. Out culture isn’t dead and on display. It is alive and everywhere.

Is it having my friend the curandero read my coca leaves? Is it living in a place where five year olds take the public bus to school by themselves without a fear that it is risky? Is it the cajones that people demonstrate everyday standing up for their rights?

I worry sometime that Bolivia is an endangered species. Will the culture of McDonalds take over here too and crowd out the small hamburger stands on the street? Will the lure of the material unravel the undercurrent of the spiritual?

Sometimes I worry that I am making things worse myself. I have drawn a lot of attention to Bolivia with my writings over these years. A lot of people have come here following the thread they thought they saw in those writings. Maybe enticing more foreigners here isn’t such a good thing.

Just in case that is true, forget everything I just said above. Bolivia is a rotten place. Don’t come here. Go somewhere with a beach. Bolivia doesn’t have a beach. Try Mexico. Cost Rica maybe.

My wife and I have three Bolivian kids. We don’t have any that aren’t Bolivian. In a couple of generations I imagine some Bolivians wondering, “How did those Bolivians get such a weird name? Shultz? What is that? In the future I will disappear into the fabric of Bolivia, a fine thread of white woven into the bright blues and reds, the rich blacks and browns.

Seven years.

Gracias Bolivia. Le debo mucho.