Santiago de Okola

Santiago de Okola... a beautiful and incredibly peaceful farming and fishing village where I stayed a couple of nights with the family of Victoria and Sebastian.  What a massively welcome contrast from the noise and busyness of La Paz...   :-)

The community is a farming and fishing village dotted along part of the shore of Lake Titicaca and sheltered along one side by the rocky mountain El Dragon Durmiendo and marked on the other by La Isla Tortuga.  The family's youngest daughter, 14-year old Yola was my guide for the two days and we walked for hours on the Dragon one day and along the shore the next.  

Along the shore we saw local folk flicking ispi fish from their nets (tiny fish that when I had them fried in batter for lucnh one day reminded me of whitebait). There are many crops grown on the land: quinoa, peas, fava beans, corn, oca, papliza, barley, wheat, oats, vegetables, and of course potatoes, of which there are apparently 2398 varieties in Bolivia, and which can be cultivated in the sandy soil right up to the edge of the water.

The gauntlet of neighbour J's sheep on the way to the beach!

The land around the houses is all hand turned and hand sown.   Families have donkeys to carry heavy loads of potatoes, cattle for milk and occasionally meat and chickens for eggs.  Sheep are used for their wool for weaving, which the women  do by hand as they sit all day long in the fields with the animals as they graze, and also to sell for meat.  The ispi fish caught in the lake are both eaten within the community and sold daily in La Paz.  The mini bus (trufi) that I caught back to La Paz had a half dozen buckets of ispi on its roof rack that the driver sold to expectant cholitas with food stalls in El Alto on the edge of the city.   Living in such a land-to-mouth community it is immediately and starkly clear that it is not sustainable to eat meat every day (definitely something I've know in my logical mind for a long time, and unpleasantly felt in my guts on the occasions where my diets got meat heavy - but it is just so glaringly obvious in the context of a subsist acne farming home.  A family has a limited amount of animals producing at their natural rate.  There would be no way the family could the meat of their own animals every day.) Saying this, we did eat beef one day and when I asked it turns out it had been bought in from La Paz.  Other than that all the food we ate was produced by the family, with each luch and dinner starting with a delicious soup of home-grown potatoes, vegetables and either quinoa, barley or wheat.... so so tasty!!

A mandala of stones made at the Dragon's beach, a tiny wee bay amongst the rocks where I dared going in the water and lasted a few minutes before the scarpering from the cold! :-) (sunshine here in Bolivia is deceptive, at these altitudes things are COLD, most of the day I'd be wandering in long sleeves!)Having had the urge to be playing music again, it was also here I worked out (just about I think!) the tune to the Skye Boat Song on the recorder I picked up in La Paz for £2.50! :-)

(Been doing a lot of thinking about Scotland in these last few weeks and my connection with the country and identity with my 'Scottishness'  [or lack of it as my mates at 12 foot6 would rib me!] and I've been reflecting a lot about the parallels in family and community identity between Scottish tartans and Bolivian weavings and wondering how I might integrate the colours and patterns into my work at the Sustainable Bolivia residency.)

View from the window of my 'casita' (tiny home)... in the calm sunny days there was no sign of how intensely windy it would get at night, the casita rattling as the cold winds buffeted it and I huddled inside under blankets drawing.

Local weavings seen at the museum - some had been made by Tomas's late grandmother. It seems the elderly in these parts commonly live to over 100.  Yola's late granny died at 125!! Surely that's  a sign of a healthy lifestyle!

Details from Kallawaya costumes in the local museum. Tomas, the community elder responsible for founding Okola's tourism, explained that as a youth he'd made costumes like this by hand.  Tomas had been my contact to organise the trip to Okola and had met me in La Paz to bring me on the slightly complicated route to the community.

 (Left) 14-year old Yola who was my guide for the long walks for the two days.  (Right) Victoria with 16-year old daughter Adrianna.  Victoria is a lovely lady with a beautiful smile and laugh, who gifted me a handful of hava beans "to plant in my country" (though I explained because of controls I wouldn't be able to take them there I have them in the studio here in Cochabamba, wondering how I might best use them.:-) The clothes Victoria wears here are typical 'cholita' clothing - a heavy 'pollera' skirt, cardigan and bowler hat. This is what Victoria wears as she works in the fields under the direct sunlight. 

My turn at the loom and as a cholita!: 72-year-old Regina who delighted in my attempts at weaving, slapping me on the back and chuckling and who then eagerly brought out a pile of local clothing, dressed me up and got Adriana to take photos of us.  

 72-year-old Regina was a real character, chuckling away as she worked, laughing that dogs easily mistake set aside weaving tools for toys to be played with and buried (the tool is used to secure she weave and is made of the llama's foreleg thigh bone).  Regina and I communicated through Adriana who translated from Aymara to Spanish, and she said that she had learned the technique as a 14 year old from her mother.  A blanket for the bed such as this one would typically take her up to a month, though her favourite weaves include figures of horses, llamas and birds, which are more complicated and take longer.  The dyes used are all natural.  The bright oranges apparently come from a mineral in local earth.  Regina's husband P also proudly donned woven pieces which he explained he had worn as the communities 'authority'.  It seems there is a custom of couples being selected to being leaders for a year during which they wear clothing whose weave indicates their status.

What a beautifully calm couple of days.  Plenty of time to think, day-dream and draw.  Here's a couple of drawings from stones and leaves collected on the beach:

Thanks to Tomas, Victoria, Yola and Adriana for being such great hosts! 

:-)