I usually wake up before six because of the guy upstairs. I can hear his morning stream, the toilet flush, and then he puts shoes on and walks about, drops things and otherwise informs my imagination about his activities through the concrete ceiling that separates us.
I put my feet on the cool tile floor and stretch enough limberness into my ligaments to get me to the bathroom. My wife Josefina has ownership of the ensuite facilities so I shuffle out the bedroom door to my more modest arrangements where I make my own stream, shave, shower, etc., and mop up after myself. Then I go to the second empty bedroom to consider what I'm going to wear today, maybe sniff what I wore yesterday, and get dressed. Usually I'll come out of this looking like a techno-geek worker: khaki trousers and short-sleeved shirt with collar.
Then I'll go to the kitchen and start the kettle while I reach back into yesterday to remember if today is huevo day or granola day. We have an alternating egg-cereal regime which somehow makes breakfast more worth looking forward to. Sometimes in crazy abandon I'll make french toast, or on the weekend maybe, pancakes. I'll squeeze oranges and set the table. Then I'll rhetorically ask Josefina if she wants breakfast in bed, which she usually turns down ungratefully.
I'm actually feeling quite human by the time I've finished my coffee. I gather the things I think I'll need today into my pack: cell phone, wallet, computer glasses, iPad, usually. I might take my camera if the day looks bright. Then I kiss Josefina goodbye, get in the elevator and subside gently to street-level. The security guy nods as I say "Buen dia" on my way by.
The 15 minute walk to work is usually pleasant and often features interesting moments. I choose among the three optimal routes. One of them takes me by a secure parking facility where I can caress a 1960s Karman Ghia convertible with my eyes and fantasize that I'm in Santa Cruz long enough to own it. That way passes some day-care facilities with yummy-mummies dropping their kid off. Another one is the First Ring, a busy divided street that encircles the city centre. In general I'd describe the street environment as hazardous to pedestrians. Drivers respect only other vehicles with which they'd come off second-best in a collision; this defines the right-of-way at intersections and as a collorary means that pedestrians are invisible. An object lesson for me: yesterday the father of one of my colleagues was struck by a car. So crossing streets, particularly el Primer Anillo (First Ring), requires focus.
Depending on the weather, I'm chilled or sweating lightly by the time I step though the portal of my workplace, the Foundation for Conservation of the Chiquitano Model Forest (FCBC), in a former opulent home turned office building. I exchange Buen Dias with the security guy, wipe my feet on the door mat and enter the house. Usually I'm among the first so there's no one else to greet and I bound up three floors to my attic desk. It's warmer up there so the nameless cat is usually curled on a chair and sits up as I arrive. She's snow white, has brilliant blue eyes, is lithe just short of skinny and looks to be a couple of years old. I sent a picture of her to my brother whose closest companion has always been a cat and he warned me that she's probably a reincarnation of our mother. She jumps up on my desk as my computer boots for the day's work.
I'm assigned to a Euopean Commission funded project called EcoAdapt which has aims to develop tools and methods to help populations in Model Forests to adapt to climate change while conserving biodiversity and not logging the place to the ground. FCBC is the civil society counterpart in Bolivia with the EcoAdapt subcontract and there are two others, in Argentina and Chile. It's a four year project. My current task is an analysis of meteorological, hydrological and other data to characterize climate variability and extreme climatic events in the study area, as input next month to interviews and workshops with stakeholders. The idea is that having science data will help to extract local knowldege. For example, if I identify a period of low precipitation in 1965-72, the interviewers can ask stakeholders how they coped with that apparent drought, and capture the lore. The data aren't very good; although met data collection started in 1942, it's sparse until about 1985 and even since then there are holes. I've been to a couple of dead-ends looking for alternative sources of information: dentrochronology examines tree rings to see good and bad years, but no one has done it in the study area; and paleochronology examines contemporary and fossil pollen records to build a local climate history, but there's no real data there either. Since there has never been hydrological measurement (eg, stream discharge volume) in the study area, establishing some gauges would be valuable, so I'm making some progress getting support for that. Maybe setting up one or more sustainable hydro stations in the ten months I have left here is possible.
I enjoy puzzling information out of raw numbers but it's a solitary task. More fun, I'm also involved in the project planning, which means lots of meetings with other people in the project. They're all Bolivian and no less smart or educated than I am, more in some cases, and they know the background. Also, if anyone speaks English they're hiding it from me, so the learning curve is steep in several dimensions. Remarkably to me, the team is about 50% women, unique in my experience.
The work hours are traditional: 8:30 - 12:30, then a two-hour lunch during which you go home or meet your lover or who knows what everyone does, and come back to work 2:30 - 6:30. When I have lunch with colleagues, squandering two hours is easy. For me, going home takes a half-hour of the available time, walking, so I don't do that often; instead I usually go to a nearby lunch place alone and get back to work within an hour or less. Then I shouldn't feel badly leaving at 5:30 instead of 6:30 like everyone else, but I haven't made any formal arrangement to do this so I feel self-conscious slinking out early.
I like the lunch places. I alarm Josefina by calling them comedores, which implies risk of food poisoning, but they're wholesome and cheap and only open for lunch. It's probably wise not to tour the kitchen. You buy a ticket at the door (18 Bolivianos, about US$2.60) and look for a place at a table inside or in a patio. Quite quickly someone shows up to ask you what segundo (entrè) you want, and shortly after that they bring a bowl of soup, a few slices from a baguette and a glass of lemonaide, for sure made with tap water. The soup has potato pieces and a large ornamental bone with sawn planes and gristle. It has body and tastes good. The segundo comes shortly after, according to your order, which might have been chicken milanesa, a beef chop mounted with a fried egg, a chicken leg with a spicy sauce, or something with an unknown name to be explored next time. The plate almost overflows with rice, salad, some veggie, the meat component and chuño. I'm not keen on this last thing and just eat a little trying to acquire the taste, unsuccessfully so far. Chuño are little potatoes about 2cm in diameter, grown in the highlands/altiplano at 4000m or so and after harvesting, left on the surface of the soil to cycle through several frosty nights and sunny days. This process dehydrates them so that they keep for months, between growing seasons. Reconstituted they're mealy-textured and not very tasty, slightly bitter. They shouldn't be confused with chullos (as I do), those cute Andino toques with the conical top and ear flaps you can tie under your chin.
Bolivians seem to be sweet toothed because there are bakery shops everywhere, and I stop in one on my way back to the office for a jam tart dessert (3 bolivianos).
If I stay in the office til 6:30 it's dark as I walk home. I usually keep to the Primer Anillo where all the action is because it's exhilarating being with everyone on their way home too, dumpy women with bags scrambling onto buses, ardent teenaged couples, street vendors, bright shops and frantic vehicle traffic. Fortunately they're not big honkers.
I can see our apartment from blocks away, like a lighthouse, because either we're the only place occupied on this side of the building or everyone else is frugal with their electricity. Josefina is there when I enter, usually, because she doesn't have a job yet. We hang out together talking and watching the TV news, or the Brazilian livestock auctions which are bizarrely entertaining for longer than you'd imagine, or indigenous culture presentations on the state propaganda channel. At 8 or so we'll have lonche, which is a light meal of bread, cheese, olives perhaps, and tea. Maybe we'll watch a movie. Usually I'll read in bed from about 9:30 (right now it's The War at the End of the World by Mario Vargas Llosa, in English) and be asleep by 11.