Bolivia Diaries: Day 7 - Santiago de Okola, an Indigenous Village

This diary is part of a series describing my trip to Bolivia to study food sovereignty, agroecology, and climate change. We spent our seventh day in an indigenous village (Santiago de Okola) on the north shore of Lake Titicaca. During the day, we ate indigenous, Andean foods, tried our hand at traditional textiles, and met a cute baby donkey named Sam.


Sam, a three month old donkey.

This was my second trip to Santiago de Okola, so I will try not to repeat information from what I posted last year. This time, we had a bit of a shorter trip, but it was a good trip for me since I got to stay with a fantastic host, find out how climate change had impacted the village over the last year, and I didn't get a sunburn this time.


Beautiful Santiago de Okola on Lake Titicaca

This year, I stayed with a man named Don Juan Cayo and his very sweet wife whose name I didn't learn. I relied on my roommate Christina for translation a lot of the time, and she spent more time chatting with our hosts and learning about their family than I did. Don Juan has five children, all grown and gone. They live as close as La Paz and as far away as Brazil, and they work in professional careers, not farming. This seems to be a major problem here, as young people leave the villages and the culture is lost as a result. Fortunately, there are a few young people who are still around in Santiago de Okola and they will carry on the traditions for the next generation.


The family we stayed with: Don Juan Cayo, his wife (whose name I didn't learn), and his dog Beethoven posing with Christina and me, with their home in the background.

We began our morning there with a textiles workshop, mostly a repeat for me but with a new component - learning how to spin yarn from wool. I half paid attention and half looked around at animals and crops nearby. As you can see below, a little bunny appeared near us and while it was not in a cage of any sort, it was a breed that is raised for meat, so it definitely belongs to somebody who wants to eat it.


A California rabbit, a meat breed.

This region of Bolivia raises a lot of sheep. In Santiago de Okola, they sheer their sheep the Monday before Ash Wednesday each year.

My roommate, Christina, began by learning to spin yarn. She encouraged me to give it a try and I did - with terrible results. It turns out that everything was set up for right-handed people only. I could do everything with my left hand but that only unspun the yarn. Whoops. I gave up since it seemed pretty futile once I realized that.


Peggy with balls of yarn spun here from wool produced here


Yarn


My roommate Christina learns to spin yarn from wool.


Spinning


Christina's figured it out. Can I? (Yes, I look ridiculous in these clothes - but I didn't get a sunburn this year! I brought pants I could've worn but they would have fallen on the floor of the bathroom every time I used the squat toilet so I went for these silly looking shorts.)


We're not set up for left handed people here. All I can do with my left hand is UN-spin the yarn.

Everyone also tried their hands at weaving. I didn't bother this year - I tried last year and it's hard! The women here can weave one of these beautiful cloths in just seven to ten days!


Paul tries weaving (It's harder than it looks!)


Tanya gets a weaving lesson.


She's pretty good at it!


Ooh pretty!

The highlight of the morning for me was a burrito. By which I mean, a baby donkey (burro in Spanish). His name is Sam and he's just three months old. He wears a traditional little amulet around his neck to protect him from feeling afraid when he wanders far from home. The amulet is a bag around his neck contains garlic and salt, among other things. Baby donkeys wear these in Bolivia. Donkeys here are used as pack animals (they can carry more than a llama), although donkeys milk is sometimes used medicinally.


Don Tomas with Sam the Donkey

After the textiles workshop, we finished by dressing up some members of our group as the traditional Aymara community leaders. The man is called a jilakata and the woman is a mamat'halla


Tour guides Gabriel and Tanya dressed up as traditional Aymara town leaders.

All around the town, we could see the remains of last year's harvest.








This little stone enclosure is "baaa"-ing... turns out it contains a mama ewe and a few lambs.

We also saw people winnowing the harvest (i.e. separating the chaff from the grains) and making chuño, a form of freeze-dried potatoes. Chuño can keep for up to five years. Because of climate change, the people here are having a hard time making chuño because they don't get enough freezing nights during the right time of year - although they ARE getting some unseasonable freezes at the WRONG time of year that occasionally kills their crops.


Winnowing the harvest


Making chuño

Don Tomas, one of the leaders of the community, took us on a quick community tour to the beach. The rainy season should be starting soon although with climate change it now starts a few months late. People are still beginning to prepare for planting, hoping the rains will come on time.


Algae on Lake Titicaca used for fertilizer


The beach, prepared for planting of potatoes and favas.


Our group on the beach.


A woman walks home with gathered sticks.

While we walked, Don Tomas told us legends about a sacred beach. People can visit there, but if they stay the night, the duende (an evil dwarf) will come and get them. Don Tomas told us several stories of people who experienced this.

Someone in our group asked him to tell us about the legend of the anchancho. The anchancho is like the devil. He takes people away and when they wake up, they are hugging a stone or a bush and they are bleeding from the mouth. Perhaps I can find more information on the duende and the anchancho to share by updating this past in the near future. I'm not finding anything online that especially resembles the beliefs in Santiago de Okola.

As we did the year before, we saw an interesting plant on the beach. It was easy to recognize as a nightshade. The local name for it is tacachilla. (Possibly Solanum nitidum?) In the past, the red fruits were used to make dyes. Humans do not eat this plant.


Tacachilla, a nightshade fruit used as a dye in the past.


Flowers of the same plant.

Back at the home of Don Tomas, we had a traditional Aymara potluck meal, called an aptapi. During the meal, I tried to get pictures of the chickens, because I find it interesting to look at what breeds of animals people keep, whether they use specific breeds, or "criollo" (creole) breeds that have evolved here. The criollo chickens are very unique looking. They've got a tiny bit of a crest, and some have feathery feet. They have four toes, not five. I would imagine that their big fat size and all of their fluff would help them stay warm on cold nights here. Plus, they have enough meat on them to make them a good meat breed. They are kept for both meat and eggs.


The unique looking criollo breed of chicken


A close-up




This one looks like a Buff Orpington

Bolivia Diaries: Day 6 - A Story of Sheep and the Climate Crisis

This diary is part of a series describing my trip to Bolivia to study food sovereignty, agroecology, and climate change. Day six of our trip was a long day of driving, ending in an indigenous village (Santiago de Okola) on the north shore of Lake Titicaca. Almost immediately after arriving, we learned a disturbing impact of the climate crisis on agriculture there.

We woke up early on Day 6 of our trip, still in Yungas, and boarded our bus to leave. Since we had all already earned our "I Survived the Death Road" T-shirts, we took the non-death road back to La Paz. In La Paz, we picked up our very beloved Bolivian guide, Gabriel, ate a quick lunch, and headed out to Santiago de Okola.

I've written at length about Santiago de Okola from my last trip to Bolivia, when we visited for three days. I was eager to return there because they'd been experiencing strange and unnerving weather patterns for the past few years and I wanted to get the scoop on what happened last year. Is this weather, or is this climate?

This year, at my request, my roommate Christina and I stayed with Don Juan Cayo, an agriculture expert. Lucky for me, Christina speaks impeccable Spanish. She spent more time with Don Juan and his wife than I did, and she also had more in depth conversations with them - which she is capable of and I am not. At least, not nearly to the same degree.

When we arrived, I gravitated RIGHT to the sheep. If there's one thing I love about rural life, it is cute baby animals. Last year when I visited, there were plenty of newborn lambs... I was hoping we'd be so lucky once again.







As you can see, we lucked out. Don Juan has about 15 sheep and they produced six lambs recently. All of his pregnant mamas had already given birth and there would be no more babies.

We arrived in the evening, and it's normal here for the sheep to be penned up already by then. In the morning, they are led out to pasture and each one wears a rope around its neck, which is then attached to the ground to keep the sheep from wandering off during the day. In the evening, the sheep come home.

But Don Juan told us that this was NOT normal right now, because he hasn't been letting the sheep out at all. There's no rain, and there's nothing to eat. So they stay in their pens and he feeds them grain and/or straw. He's a trained vet and he plans to give them some sort of "treatment" (as he called it) - vitamins or medications or something - to make up for the lack of pasture.

At this point I started asking questions. Isn't it normal to plan for sheep to be born when grass is plentiful? Yes, he said. The rains used to start much sooner but now they are coming several months late, not until December or January. So whereas lambs born now used to arrive when the rains came and the grass grew, now they do not.

And don't the mother sheep need lots of food in order to make milk for their babies? Yes, he said. This is a problem. Look - they are so hungry, they are eating one another's wool. And he was right. As we watched, we saw the poor, hungry sheep eating wool right off one another's backs.

Everywhere we went in the Altiplano, we saw baby lambs who had been born recently in anticipation of the annual rainy season that wasn't coming. And when the rain does come now, it comes all at once, sometimes causing flooding and even landslides. Without grass, the farmers had to feed their sheep grain and straw. Grain and straw that they grew that was to last the whole year - based on the assumption that during part of the year, the sheep would be eating grass. And while all the straw was intended for the animals, the grain was to feed the people for the year too.

If the grain and straw ran out they had a few choices. They could buy more food if they could afford it, or they could butcher or sell a sheep or two to reduce their food needs. Or perhaps they could do both, since selling a sheep would bring in money to feed the others. But, again, that was money intended as income for the family. And if they sold a ewe, then they would produce fewer lambs in future years, with the result of less food and wool and/or less income.

I felt terrible for the poor sheep, as I watched them eating one another's wool. I felt even worse when I visited another family's home the next day and saw their entire flock wearing muzzles:



I am not sure if the muzzles are intended to keep them from eating wool, but I cannot imagine what else they are for, since the sheep were all penned up and there was nothing else for them to eat that the muzzles might be keeping them from eating. I nearly cried when I saw those sheep in muzzles. Imagine being so hungry you would eat wool, and yet you have your mouth tied shut so you can't? This is what the climate crisis looks like to those it is impacting now.