Frustrating Obstacles
Barriers, obstacles, difficulties, hurdles- each of these words are applicable to some of my experiences here in Cochabamba. While I have loved my time here meeting new people, learning new things about the country and myself, I cannot say that my experience here has been without challenges.
The language barrier. This has been the most difficult obstacle that I have faced here in Bolivia. With very little knowledge of Spanish before coming here, I found myself constantly being bombarded with the culture shock of simply not being able to understand people. Even with taking Spanish classes here, I find myself constantly seeing people giving me blank stares when I try to say something in Spanish or English. I mean, even my Spanish teacher calls me “pobresito” aka “poor baby” because I just cannot comprehend what she or other people are saying when they speak in Spanish. I find myself mentally exhausted everyday just from trying to focus so hard to get even a fraction of what some people are saying. On top of the language barrier, I find that many people also assume that they won’t even understand me, as if they have a mental block. For example, with taxi drivers, waiters/waitresses, and many other people, I have found myself attempting to speak Spanish and even saying things perfectly, however, I feel as if people just assume that they won’t understand me. This has been particularly frustrating because it’s as if another assumption or judgement is being made about me without any proof or backing to it. The language barrier has been my biggest obstacle that I have faced here in Bolivia, and thankfully, I can say that it is getting a little easier. I even took a taxi by myself for the first time the other day and was able to give directions and everything to the driver. Hopefully, someday I will be able to converse with others in Spanish, and though I know that it won’t happen during this global experience, I’ve found that it has opened the door to a completely new knowledge base.
Communication. Beyond the language barrier, communication has also been a hurdle for me. Especially for work, I have found that communication between our group and our NGO has been particularly frustrating. Part of our work includes social media and filtering through pictures to help the firm isolate the best ones to create a portfolio to show to potential clients. Much of the time, our instructions were to “make it better,” or “choose the one’s that look the best.” I found this to be very challenging to figure out because much of the time, I or the other fellows in our placement have very different opinions, perspectives, and views from our boss, so it was very challenging at first to figure out exactly what was expected and what would represent the firm in the best way. Thankfully, with time, we have figured out a system to make sure that our perspectives and opinions meet eye-to-eye; it was just something that took time.
The silver line between being respectful and doing the right thing. This has been something that I found myself particularly challenged with with regards to some of the work we have done. Another portion of our fellowship has us working with a woman named Graciela, Mario Moscoso’s wife, with regards to ecology and the environment. One or two days a week, the three of us find ourselves going into the street in front of our placement and literally taking rocks out of the road and moving them to the side. Every morning before doing so, she has us collect all the dry plants, twigs, paper, and garbage in order to burn it. Most of the time, this garbage includes things like plastic soda containers, bags, wrappers, etc. — all things that we know are not good for the environment. I find myself conflicted between respectful to my host and following her wishes and telling her that such habits will end up harming the environment instead of helping it. This has been one particular challenge that we have yet to conquer.
