#002: "The Peace"
#002: La Paz.
6-08-06
First day out and about in La Paz, shopping with Team for field supplies (notebooks, graph paper, batteries). This place is fast, vibrant, very intense. There’s a cramped energy to it, a tight, pedestrian quickness. Everyone walks, or runs (even down the steepest of hills), or takes a mini-bus. You have to cross the narrow streets quickly before one of them runs you over, and then when it passes you hear someone yelling at you in superfast Spanish. A. (one of the grad students) saw I was startled by it and told me that’s the voceador, a man, or woman these days, who leans out the window, shouting out the destination and price. It’s always stylized, sounds like a baseball-announcer type drone. I’ll bring out my voice recorder tomorrow and try to catch it.
There are so many different kinds of people here - I don’t yet know how to categorize them, or why I should, but among them seem to be businessmen/women, university students, buyers, sellers, everyone going, hustling and bustling. There's a huge Indigenous presence, lots of folks from the campo (countryside), primarily women, in traditional dress that's varied and bright in color but standardized in design – long, tiered skirts , bright wool shawls and small derby hats perched gently atop their heads – often working as street vendors selling cell phones, candy, gloves and trinkets, sometimes huddled against a wall holding a hat out. Lots of security guards, too, in black outfits and bullet-proof vests monitoring the entrances to fancy restaurants, office building, and even the cell phone store where we went to see about buying new phones. You had to take a number and a police officer (metallic green) guided you to “sientate” in the waiting area. The four of us laughed, and wondered if we had brought any of us had brought any Kafka to read. We probably won’t need it.
06-09-06
The streets here are rugged and maze-like in many areas. I've stopped wearing open-toed shoes, not only to avoid looking even more like a tourist, but because the cobblestone sidewalks are so steep and knobbly that the smart gringo probably wears hiking boots. The indigenas sometimes wear sandals, but most people wear boots, loafers, sneakers - both the old-fashioned and fashionable, expensive kind - and there are shoe-shiners ready on every corner with wooden platforms, their clientele mostly businessmen on their lunch breaks.
6-08-06
First day out and about in La Paz, shopping with Team for field supplies (notebooks, graph paper, batteries). This place is fast, vibrant, very intense. There’s a cramped energy to it, a tight, pedestrian quickness. Everyone walks, or runs (even down the steepest of hills), or takes a mini-bus. You have to cross the narrow streets quickly before one of them runs you over, and then when it passes you hear someone yelling at you in superfast Spanish. A. (one of the grad students) saw I was startled by it and told me that’s the voceador, a man, or woman these days, who leans out the window, shouting out the destination and price. It’s always stylized, sounds like a baseball-announcer type drone. I’ll bring out my voice recorder tomorrow and try to catch it.
There are so many different kinds of people here - I don’t yet know how to categorize them, or why I should, but among them seem to be businessmen/women, university students, buyers, sellers, everyone going, hustling and bustling. There's a huge Indigenous presence, lots of folks from the campo (countryside), primarily women, in traditional dress that's varied and bright in color but standardized in design – long, tiered skirts , bright wool shawls and small derby hats perched gently atop their heads – often working as street vendors selling cell phones, candy, gloves and trinkets, sometimes huddled against a wall holding a hat out. Lots of security guards, too, in black outfits and bullet-proof vests monitoring the entrances to fancy restaurants, office building, and even the cell phone store where we went to see about buying new phones. You had to take a number and a police officer (metallic green) guided you to “sientate” in the waiting area. The four of us laughed, and wondered if we had brought any of us had brought any Kafka to read. We probably won’t need it.
06-09-06
The streets here are rugged and maze-like in many areas. I've stopped wearing open-toed shoes, not only to avoid looking even more like a tourist, but because the cobblestone sidewalks are so steep and knobbly that the smart gringo probably wears hiking boots. The indigenas sometimes wear sandals, but most people wear boots, loafers, sneakers - both the old-fashioned and fashionable, expensive kind - and there are shoe-shiners ready on every corner with wooden platforms, their clientele mostly businessmen on their lunch breaks.
posted by kazmira at 7:43 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home