Face of Bolivia

This is a strange day for me. These are my last hours in Bolivia and South America. In a few hours I'll be flying to England and returning to a more familiar world. I am sad that these almost six weeks have gone by so rapidly and that I won't have the opportunity to continue learning more about these cultures and speaking Spanish for quite sometime.

The first picture comes from a museum on a tiny island on Lake Titicaca. Residents dug up and, together with an archeologist pieced together the face of an Amari resident who lived around 200BC. These were a proud people, who were quite advanced in astronomy, architecture, and medicine. There is much conjecture about what happened to them. The Inkas, whose oral tradition might have given some clues, came on the scene over 1000 years later, were so totally obliterated by the Spanish that we know little about these early folks..

The second picture is of a peasant girl selling chocolates on the street of La Paz. Her fate is in question. Without education or connections, she may at some point be faced with even more difficult choices to survive.

The last picture of this old man was taken yesterday. He came up to me and reached into his pocket and pulled out a small hard rock ostensibly sell. It was split open in the middle and revealled a fossil of a trilobyte, which had also lived many years ago along Lake Titicaca.

There is a connection between these three faces which can be seen in their similar physiology. Moreover they are emblematic of the challenging history of South American people. I am beginning to understand that story and feel deeply about it. I recognize appreciating its value as a key component in my Amizade adventure.