Mayday, Mayday!
No, this is not a Mamas and the Papas song.
The first of May in Bolivia is synonymous with Labor Day in that it honors the Bolivian worker. Here, laborers of Bolivia unite for a day off from their jobs, any hardships they’ve endured, or even anti-government strikes that have become so prominent over the past few years.
I decide I will simply use the time to sleep in late, spend some quality time with the family, and attend a birthday party of one of our kid's best friends.
President Evo Morales decides he has other ideas.
I have hardly risen from my bed when I receive a call that President Morales decides to ‘bestow a special gift on the Bolivian people’ which, it turns out, is to expel USAID.
That would be Liebi’s employer.
Neither Liebi nor I think for a moment that this statement isn’t genuine. So this is how our stay in Bolivia is going to end after three years…expulsion by the host government. Nobody wonders about the ‘if’ but merely the ‘when’, and we still do. If the past is any indication, the Drug Enforcement Agency was expelled in 2008 and given 90 days to leave the country. If that is our lot, we will be gone by this summer, our next destination unknown.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise. I still attend the birthday party with my children, the parents acting concerned and outraged about Evo’s latest coup, wondering aloud whether this latest chest thumping is genuine. I assured them it is—if Evo is ever going to make a statement toward the international community (not to mention his own people), what better time to do it than now, after the passing of his dear friend, the late Hugo Chavez of Venezuela?
There has been plenty of saber rattling in the past about expelling USAID, although this was taken with a grain of salt. Millions of dollars of foreign aid to the government are millions of good reasons to button your lip, swallow your pride, and work with the agency in question. So there were plenty of henchmen calling for the ouster of USAID, mainly for the reason that the government wished to empower its people. Here we’re a little uncertain about how you empower your people with projects (bridges, wells) being put on hold, but we suppose we’ll take this statement at face value.
What follows next is uncertain. We had planned to complete our tour here, which would have ended next summer, but it’s clear that is not going to happen. It appears it looks more like an early exit, and a fire sale of many of our possessions.
Despite this inglorious exit from Bolivia, Liebi and I can’t complain. We’ve had a wonderful ride here—since we’ve known each other, we’ve lived in La Paz longer than any other place, almost three years. La Paz has been extremely good to us and the kids, who by now can speak Spanish like the natives.
So the government has proven to be unstable—which one isn’t? We still recall the bhands in Kathmandu or the Arab Spring we avoided by leaving the Middle East in 2008. And just how stable will the next government be? Who knows?
Either way, our hats are off to this place. La Paz is truly unique as a city, and there will certainly be plenty of times when we will miss the place.
That said, after years of living in the mountains (Atlas in Morocco, Himalayas in Nepal, and the Andes here in Bolivia), I fancy the beach next. Maybe the Caribbean, if we can swing it.
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